
PROVINCIAL ITPES 
IN AMERICAN FICTION 



HO.n\CE SPENCER FISKE 



CHAUrAUQUA 
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PROVINCIAL TYPES IN 
AMERICAN FICTION 



BY 



HORACE SPENCER FISKE 

EXTENSION LECTURER IN ENGLISH LITERATURE, THE 

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO 

AUTHOR OF "THE BALLAD OF MANILA BAY AND OTHER 

VERSES," " CHICAGO IN PICTURE AND POETRY," 

ETC. 




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Copyright, 1903, by 
THE CHAUTAUQUA PRESS. 



J. g.'Cushing k Ca.'— Berwick & Smith Co. 
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



PREFACE 

The field of American fiction is so wide and so varied 
that only one phase of it has been touched upon in the 
present volume, — certain types of American provincial 
life as studied since the Civil War by authors in New 
England, the South, the Middle West, and the Far West. 
The literature of these sections of the country written 
since the Civil War is so embarrassingly rich that, with 
one exception, nothing of the flood of very recent fiction 
is included in the scope of this limited study. The effort 
of the writer has been to confine himself largely to what 
is rather indefinitely called " realistic " literature, and to 
emphasize the truth of characterization found in such 
fiction as has come to be generally recognized for its 
special significance and permanent value as a reflection 
of certain phases of our national life. 

The present volume can, of course, be only suggestive, 
but if it succeeds in stimulating to an appreciative study 
and enjoyment of the dozen works of fiction considered, 
it will have largely accomplished its purpose. 

In tracing the development of provincial character in 
any particular novel or story, it has seemed best to give 



iv Preface 

as much as possible of the author's individuality of con- 
ception and flavor of style, rather than to indulge in long 
descriptive writing and cumbersome paraphrase, — in the 
hope that the peculiar charm of the author considered 
may stir a desire for more intimate acquaintance, and so 
lead on to a genuine appreciation of what is best in 
American fiction. 

HORACE SPENCER FISKE. 

Chicago, April, 1903. 



CONTENTS 



PROVINCIAL TYPES IN NEW ENGLAND 

HA.PTER PAGE 

I. A Brief Survey of the Field i 

II. "The Rise of Silas Lapham " by William Dean Howells 1 1 

III. " Pembroke " by Mary E. Wilkins .... 43 

IV. " Deephaven," by Sarah Orne Jewett .... 64 

PROVINCIAL TYPES IN THE SOUTH 

V. A Brief Survey of the Field >jc 

" VI. "In Ole Virginia" by Thomas Nelson Page . . . 87 

- VII. " Colonel Carter of Cartersville " by F. Hopkinson Smith 97 
VIII. " Uncle Remus : His Songs and His Sayings " by Joel 

Chandler Harris 106 

-IX. " The Grandissimes " by George W. Cable . . .118 
^ X. "The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains" by 

" Charles Egbert Craddock " 133 

PROVINCIAL TYPES IN THE MISSISSIPPI 
VALLEY 

XL A Brief Survey of the Field 144 

XII, " The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn " by " Mark 

Twain" .... ^cy 



vi Contents 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XIII. "The Hoosier Schoolmaster" by Edward Eggleston . 167 

XIV. " Main-Traveled Roads " by HamUn Garland , '179 

PROVINCIAL TYPES IN THE FAR WEST 

XV. A Brief Survey of the Field 208 

XVI. " The Virginian " by Owen Wister . . . .215 

XVII. "The Luck of Roaring Camp " by Bret Harte . . 241 



PROVINCIAL TYPES IN NEW 
ENGLAND 

CHAPTER I 

A BRIEF SURVEY OF THE FIELD 

If, in the fiction written in America since the Civil War, 
there has not yet appeared the long-looked-for great " Ameri- 
can " novel, there has nevertheless been written much that 
is a true and delightful reflection of genuine American char- 
acter, particularly of that character as seen in the country 
and in those sections that have been least affected by the 
progress of a growing national unity. American literature 
may, in fact, be said to be made up of an aggregation of 
sectional literatures — -the literatures of New England, the 
South, the Middle West, and the Far West. This aggrega- 
tion naturally lacks unity, but it is all American ; and perhaps 
at some time these diverse characteristics may be fused by 
some masterly writer of fiction into a harmonious whole, 
which shall, by its vast variety yet unifying American spirit, 
be recognized as the great American novel. 

From the time of the production of" Rip Van Winkle " and 
"Sleepy Hollow" by Washington Irving, of the "Leather- 
stocking Tales" by James Fenimore Cooper, and of "The 
Scarlet Letter" and "The House of the Seven Gables" 
by Nathaniel Hawthorne, to the present, the men who have 



2 Provincial Types in New England 

done the most effective literary work and shown us most 
vividly certain phases of American life have usually been 
those who wrought in somewhat circumscribed fields — 
fields that they personally knew and loved. And among 
the writers of so-called " realistic " fiction in America none 
has had a more distinct place as a leader or a wider recog- 
nition among readers than WilHam Dean Howells. Although 
born in the Middle West, Mr. Howells lived for a number 
of years in Boston, and notwithstanding his later life in New 
York, he is still recognized as distinctly and successfully a 
portrayer of New England character. Three of his finest 
achievements in fiction have to do almost entirely with New 
England life, — "A Modern Instance," "The Lady of the 
Aroostook," and " The Rise of Silas Lapham." These are 
all in what is known as his " earher " manner, before his 
literary art became so subtle, sociological, and photographic, 
and give in a remarkably real way various phases of that 
typical New England character which the world has come 
to believe combines in itself many of the elements of the 
American national mind. In the first-mentioned book 
Mr. Howells's characterization of Bartley Hubbard as the 
" smart " young newspaper man, who is reading law in 
'Squire Gaylord's office, and who later wooes and wins and 
divorces Marcia, the 'Squire's daughter, is so masterly that 
at one time we can hardly help admiring the breeziness and 
audacity and acuteness of the character, and at another we 
are driven in repulsion from its cheapness and baseness and 
brutal cynicism. And when the old 'Squire — " Mr. F. J. 
Gaylord, of Equity, Equity County, Maine " — pleads in the 
Tecumseh court-house in his own daughter's behalf, and 
charges his son-in-law with perjury, the pathos and dramatic 
quahty of the scene go far to divert from Mr. Howells the 



A Brief Survey of the Field 3 

oft-repeated charge that he is enamored of the common- 
place. 

As Mr. Harry Thurston Peck, the editor of The Bookman, 
remarks of " The Lady of the Aroostook," it would be diffi- 
cult to find in American realistic fiction a more happily 
developed and delightful story than that of Lydia Blood, 
the provincial New England girl, who, reared in the grim 
and almost joyless rural community of South Bradfield in the 
hills of Northern Massachusetts, shows herself on board the 
saihng vessel Aroostook to be, unconsciously to herself, but 
very charmingly to her exclusively male companions, a 
genuine " lady," — though to the eye of the European critic 
such a middle-class provincial type could hardly come under 
the designation of " a lady " at all. And in Venice itself, 
under the well-meant but embarrassing surveillance of her 
half-Europeanized aunt, Lydia is as easily the true and self- 
possessed and irresistible " lady " as she was under the eyes 
of the chivalrous old sea-captain Jenness, the vulgar and 
drunken Hicks, or the hypercritical and cynical Staniford. 
Mr. Howells has given to this unique story a distinctly 
provincial setting, his opening and closing chapters bringing 
before the mind with almost perfect art the characteristic 
figures of fussy but undemonstrative Aunt Maria, Deacon 
Latham, the domesticated and uncertain old grandfather, 
Ezra Perkins, the dumb and formal driver of the yellow 
Concord coach, besides the picture of the "blue-cold" 
meeting-house, the savage desolation of the snow-hidden 
hills, the graveyard, as animated as the rest of the village, 
the sheet-iron stove in the parlor, the horsehair furniture, 
and the pea-green lamp with the red woolen wick that lights 
up this typical New England village with an immortal glow. 

But the most distinctively and broadly national figure that 



4 Provincial Types in New England 

Mr. Howells has drawn is probably that in " Silas Lapham," 
— the character of the paint manufacturer, that typical 
product of the American nouveaux 7'iches, who has struggled 
out and up from the bleak Vermont hills into a prosperous 
and expanding business in Boston, and who yet hangs sus- 
pended above the precipice of social failure when he pitifully 
discovers that his hard-earned money cannot buy him posi- 
tion or friendships or culture. Here are the braggadocio 
of the self-made man who is praising his creator and 
is yet self-depreciative, the shrewd and refreshing humor, 
the instinctive generosity and genuine nobility, the undying 
energy and sure eye to the main chance, and the merciless 
conscientiousness that pursues even to self-ruin — these are 
all here, united in a Yankee nature that stirs one's sense of 
the ridiculous, the pathetic, and the positively heroic. And 
much of this is felt even in the first few pages of " The Rise 
of Silas Lapham," through the subtle and vivid power of 
the novelist, — in that memorable interview with Bartley 
Hubbard, who seems unerringly to penetrate every weak 
little vanity of the boastful and self-centered man, and 
draw from him without reserve the wearisome minutiae of 
a commonplace life. 

Another convincing study of a rural type under urban 
conditions is found in " The Minister's Charge," in which, 
through the unwilling agency of a Boston preacher, Lem- 
uel Barker, a raw New England boy from Willoughby 
Pastures, smitten with the egotism of literary creation, 
comes to the city bent on publishing a poem ; and by 
strangely connected causes the poor boy is driven on from 
one emergency to another, through love and poverty and 
ambition and shame and self-sacrifice, to an apparently 
impotent end. And with him are involved such strongly 



A Brief Survey of the Field 5 

provincial types as his first sweetheart, Statira Dudley, 
her garrulous and insuppressible companion, 'Manda Grier, 
and his strong-minded, self-forgetting, bloomer-wearing 
old mother. 

Among the many writers who have attempted to set 
forth the salient characteristics of the provincial New 
England type, few can be ranked above Miss Wilkins, 
whose realistic art has a sure and sympathetic touch for 
the grim, gaunt, indomitable figures that move through 
the fields and remoter villages of the Puritan's country. 
In her " Humble Romance," her " New England Nun and 
Other Stories," and her more ambitious work, " Pem- 
broke," she has given faithful and vivid pictures of rural 
and community life, — in fact, they are often so closely 
drawn as to be almost painful in their embodiment of 
merciless conscience, unrelenting will, joyless religious 
life, a certain moral intolerance, and a lack of the sweet 
and lovable and beautiful. Will and conscience dominate 
some of her stories like passions, and they sometimes run 
to tragic and grotesque excesses in their rnanifestations, 
which may be true enough and characteristic enough, but 
which make us exclaim at times, " Why this eternal round 
of unrelieved rigidity and self-imposed tragedy and mis- 
ery ? " But here and there, in truth to life also, are the 
lighter touches of humor and charity and intense but un- 
demonstrative love. 

Many of Miss Wilkins's people are so "set," as the 
Yankees themselves would say, that they almost pass the 
bounds of the reader's patience ; and, as in " Pembroke," 
a young man will sooner give up the girl he loves than go 
back on a rashly spoken word, — a father will sooner see 
his daughter go through a long life unmarried and em- 



6 Provincial Types in New England 

bittered than suffer himself to speak a word of apology 
for a hot-tempered outbreak. This idolatry of self-esteem 
and self-will is most vividly shown in the dominating spirit 
of Deborah Thayer in "Pembroke" — a veritable she- 
Puritan, who stands before us thin-lipped, insistent, unfor- 
giving. And her son, Barney Thayer, is like unto herself 
— as "set" and as hopelessly stubborn. With his new 
house all but finished, with an attractive and loyal woman, 
Charlotte Barnard, ready to marry him, he comes for 
almost the last of many visits to woo his sweetheart. But 
on that fatal night his will clashes with the equally impe- 
rious will of his prospective father-in-law, Cephas Barnard; 
the old man orders him from the house, and Barney Thayer 
vows never to cross the threshold again, — " I never will, 
by the Lord Almighty." The door slams after him, but 
his sweetheart, Charlotte, eagerly follows him, calling his 
name ; yet he does not even turn his head. And through 
long years he kept his stubborn word, the new house 
occupied only by the ghost of a thwarted love, and the 
lives of himself and the woman he loved dragging on in 
needless misery and daily bitterness. 

Yet underneath all this apparent rigidness of nature is 
glowing in the book the intense flame of passion that will 
not be put out, and in its scorching effect even the grim 
stiffness of Deborah Thayer suffers. For her own daugh- 
ter, Rebecca, when thwarted by her mother in her strong 
love for William Berry, secretly yields to his passion ; 
and as the languid, pining girl is submitting to the fitting 
of a new dress, which is being made by her mother as a 
sort of consoling gift, the truth that she has loved not 
wisely but too well is only too evident. Her mother orders 
her from the house even in the midst of a snow-storm — 



A Brief Survey of the Field 7 

she is more relentless than the fury of the storm itself. 
Later, after Rebecca's forced marriage and the birth of 
her dead child, her mother seems ignorant of her exist- 
ence ; and no one ventures to mention Rebecca's name 
in her presence. 

The reader is sometimes tempted to inquire if there is 
really blood in the veins of some of these people presented 
by the pitiless art of Miss Wilkins. Mr. Barrie's " Auld 
Lichts," grim as they are, are softly human in comparison 
with some of these New England types. But in extenua- 
tion it must be said that characters like Deborah Thayer 
are often religious in their motives and action, and confuse 
their own will with the imagined will of the God of all. 
And this is pathetically illustrated in the punishment of 
her invalid son, Ephraim, which resulted so unexpectedly 
in his death. His mother was doing it, she thought, for 
his present and eternal good. 

A kindlier, sweeter phase of New England life is seen 
in the satisfying art of the books written by Sarah Orne 
Jewett, who, for subtle sympathy with her characters, an 
appreciation of their finer, higher qualities, and a medium 
of expression Greek-like in its simplicity and serenity, 
must take a very high place in the portrayal of provincial 
New England types. In " Country By-Ways," " Tales of 
New England," and " A Country Doctor," and especially 
in " A Marsh Island" and " Deephaven," Miss Jewett has 
done very much to preserve in permanent literary form 
the quaint and beautiful traits of rural New England. As 
one recalls the people in " A Marsh Island," the exquisite 
and lovable figure of Doris Owen emerges in the dawn- 
light of that memorable morning when she made her trem- 
bling and heroic way to Westmarket to confess her love 



8 Provincial Types in New England 

and dissuade her angry lover from embarking for the 
Banks. And there is Doris's dear old father with the touch 
of sentiment and imagination and love of nature, and the 
tireless and ambitious mother, and Jim Fales, and the jeal- 
ous but virile and constant Dan Lester, — a group of rural 
figures made all the more interesting by the unique back- 
ground of quiet beauty and color that Miss Jewett knows 
how to draw so easily and so effectively. 

In Miss Jewett's " Deephaven " we have a collection of 
short sketches and stories that show her art at its highest, 
and so realistic as to lead many readers to suppose that 
" Deephaven " is a veritable New England seaport known 
to themselves. Miss Jewett, however, in her preface, dis- 
claims any close identity in her characterizations, and 
denies that " Deephaven " is on the actual map of New 
England. The two Boston girls who spent that mem- 
orable summer in the quaint old Brandon house at Deep- 
haven make delightfully fresh and interesting figures 
amid the decayed aristocracy and retired sea-captains and 
talkative widows and sedate spinsters of the inactive but 
charming old seaport. The optimistic and humorous Mrs. 
Kew,wife of the lighthouse keeper, the reminiscent "Widow 
Jim," w^ho could make rugs and preside at funerals, and 
had "faculty"; the pipe-smoking, story-telling old sea- 
captains, like Captain Isaac Horn ; Captain Lant, who, 
though now devoted to farming, had to take " a day's 
fishing every hand's turn, to keep the old hulk clear of 
barnacles;" the lame, red-shirted " Danny," with his cat 
and hospital stories ; and the visionary Captain Sands, 
who had a sort of marine museum and was a specialist in 
weather and the mysteries of telepathy, — some of these 
types seem done from the life, and over them all is a 



A Brief Survey of the Field 9 

misty light of remoteness and tradition that softens and 
endears. 

Another volume that is redolent of New England sea air 
is " Caleb West, Master Diver," which was written out of 
the actual experiences of the author, F. Hopkinson Smith, 
who, as is generally known, is a marine engineer and archi- 
tect, as well as a painter, lecturer, and novelist. The book 
is alive with struggle against wind and wave, with a sense 
of the truly heroic in the daily achievements of such honest 
and noble types as Captain Joe and Caleb West — two as 
real men as often walk in the pages of a novel. They are 
rough, weather-beaten men, but not coarse — and their 
work as builders of submarine structures is a definitely 
shaping influence that accounts for iron in the blood and 
a splendid self-reliance. And their moral make-ups are as 
wholesome and invigorating as the sea air in which they 
work and live. Aunty Bell's kitchen is a place to eat in 
and to be happy in, and her husband's gospel of compas- 
sion and forgiveness for the " hoodooed " but sweet- 
natured Betty, the master diver's young wife, has in it a 
touch of the divine. The " Pocomokian," Major Slocomb, 
from the South, is suggestive of that even more delightful 
character. Colonel Carter of Cartersville, — a type of 
inconsequential, shiftless, but chivalric and engagingly 
social, qualities that Mr. Smith has a peculiar aptitude in 
depicting. 

New England has proved a rich theme for portrayers of 
provincial character, as we have already seen, and a long 
list of fiction writers covering this particular field might 
easily be made out ; but it is sufficient for our present pur- 
pose to mention only a few of the more conspicuous, like 
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps-Ward, who excels in the emotional 



lO Provincial Types in New England 

force of her intense characters ; Thomas Bailey Aldrich, 
whose " Stillwater Tragedy " presents with great vividness 
and charm the life of a New England factory town ; Sally 
Pratt McLean, with her minutely finished portraits of 
" Cape Cod Folks " ; and Arlo Bates, whose " Diary of a 
Saint " presents, in striking contrast to the title, one of the 
most intense local dramas in New England life. 

Although New York and Pennsylvania have not been so 
prolific a field as New England in furnishing provincial 
literary types, the former state found in Harold Frederic 
a sympathetic interpreter of his native valley of the Mo- 
hawk, and he produced a unique series of local novels in 
" Seth's Brother's Wife," " In the Valley," " The Lawton 
Girl," and " The Damnation of Theron Ware." Rebecca 
Harding Davis has written several tales with a Pennsylva- 
nia background, and Margaret Deland made a village in 
Allegheny County the scene of "John Ward, Preacher." 



CHAPTER II 

"THE RISE OF SILAS LAPHAM " BY WILLIAM DEAN 
HOWELLS 

Perhaps the most virile and typically American charac- 
ter created by Mr. Howells is that of Silas Lapham, the 
paint manufacturer, who struggled up the ladder of mate- 
rial prosperity out of the hills of Northern Vermont, ex- 
panded into a great business in Boston, where for the sake 
of his two daughters he made a pathetic effort to achieve 
something of a social position, and then through others' 
dishonesty, his own speculation, and an unrelenting con- 
scientiousness, collapsed financially, and was obliged to 
return to his starting-point in the little Vermont town of 
hard beginnings. 

In the first few pages of the novel, by means of a news- 
paper interview, the author has depicted, with a vivid thor- 
oughness and a humorous touch, the laborious and self-made 
career of the central figure of the story. Bartley Hubbard, 
a shrewd and cynical newspaper man, is writing what he 
calls the " Solid Men of Boston " series for The Eveftts, 
and he desires to include the millionaire paint manufac- 
turer in the list. As Bartley waits expectantly, with his 
note-book on his lap, Lapham, absorbed in his business 
correspondence, suddenly swings in his swivel-chair, so as 
to face his interviewer, and asks, with characteristic humor, 



I a Provincial Types in New England 

" So you want my life, death, and Christian sufferings, do 
you, young man ? " Bartley's reply, " Your money or your 
life," suggests to Lapham the rather pungent comment, 
" I guess you wouldn't want my life without the money." 
Bartley, however, insists that he doesn't want Lapham's 
money without his life, but adds significantly, *' You're 
just one million times more interesting to the public than 
if you hadn't a dollar." And thereupon, while he waited 
for Lapham to continue, Bartley jotted down this graphic 
individual sketch in his note-book : " In personal appear- 
ance Silas Lapham is a fine type of the successful Ameri- 
can. He has a square, bold chin, only partially concealed 
by the short reddish-gray beard, growing to the edges of 
his firmly closing lips. His nose is short and straight ; 
his forehead good, but broad rather than high ; his eyes 
blue, and wath a light in them that is kindly or sharp ac- 
cording to his mood. He is of medium height, and fills an 
average arm-chair with a solid bulk. . . . His head droops 
somewhat from a short neck which does not trouble itself 
to rise far from a pair of massive shoulders." 

When Lapham expressed a doubt as to where the inter- 
viewer wanted him to begin, Bartley rather pleased his 
victim by remarking, "Might begin with your birth ; that's 
where most of us begin." Lapham gives the information 
that he was born some fifty-five years before, pretty well 
up under the Canadian line, but " I was bound to be an 
American citizen of some sort, from the word Go ! " " Par- 
ents poor, of course," suggested Bartley. " Any barefoot 
business ? Early deprivations of any kind, that would en- 
courage the youthful reader to go and do likewise ? Or- 
phan myself, you know." But the abiding sense of the 
hard seriousness of his early struggles stirred the quiet 



" The Rise of Silas Laphani " 13 

self-respect of Lapham to say that, if the interviewer re- 
garded Lapham's early life as a joke, the interview was at 
an end. The unabashed Bartley only wrote in his note- 
book how Lapham's parents "taught their children the 
simple virtues of the Old Testament and Poor Richard's 
Almanac." 

When Lapham again grew reminiscent he felt a lump in 
his throat at the tender thought of his mother's assiduous 
care and heroic self-sacrifice for her boys : " She was a lit- 
tle, frail thing, not bigger than a good-sized intermediate 
schoolgirl ; but she did the whole work of a family of boys, 
and boarded the hired men besides. She cooked, swept, 
washed, ironed, made, and mended from daylight till dark, 
— and from dark till daylight, I was going to say ; for I 
don't know how she got any time for sleep." He recalls 
how she always found time, too, to go to church, to teach 
her boys to read the Bible, and to " misunderstand it in the 
old way." " She was good. But it ain't her on her knees 
in church that comes back to me so much like the sight of 
an angel as her on her knees before me at night, washing 
my poor, dirty little feet, that I'd run bare in all day, and 
making me decent for bed. ... I can feel her hands on 
my feet yet ! " Whereupon Bartley, the unsentimental, 
looked down at Silas's No. 10 boots and gently whistled 
through his teeth. 

Lapham's suggestion that he would like to paint his 
mother's hard and stunted life for the modern women who 
complain of their empty existence is a cue to the inter- 
viewer to swing his subject over to the matter of the min- 
eral paint that has proved the foundation of Lapham's 
present fortune. The latter eagerly relates how his father 
found the deposit of mineral paint in a hole made by the 



14 Provincial Types in New England 

upturned roots of a tree that had blown down. But the 
country at that time was too poor for paint, and Silas's 
father had no facilities for putting it on the market. So 
that the paint-mine got to be a kind of joke with the Lap- 
ham family. Finally all the other boys went West and 
took up land, while Silas stayed by the farm, " not because 
the paint-mine was on it, but because the old house was — 
and the graves." Even Silas himself went off, to try Texas, 
but after three months of it he found that Vermont was 
" good enough " for him. He married the school-teacher 
in Lumberville, and together they ran the hotel. His wife 
urged him to "paint up," till at last he yielded, and to- 
gether they drove out to the farm and brought back " a 
bushel of the stuff." " I tried it crude, and I tried it burnt ; 
and I liked it. . . . There wa'n't any painter by trade in 
the village, and I mixed it myself. Well, sir, that tavern's 
got that coat of paint on it yet." When Silas Lapham got 
the first coat on, his sympathetic and filial memory called 
up the picture of his old father who had failed, and in 
recounting the incident to his interviewer Silas sadly re- 
marked, " I've noticed that most things get along too late 
for most people." He recalled how his wife Persis came 
out from the kitchen with her sleeves rolled up and sat 
down beside him on the trestle, and how he asked, " What 
do you think, Persis ? " " And says she, ' Well, you hain't 
got a paint-mine, Silas Lapham ; you've got a ^<?/^-mine.' " 
As a memorial to his father, Silas wanted to call the 
paint the " Nehemiah Lapham Mineral Paint," but finding 
the name too long he had stamped on every barrel, keg, 
bottle, and package, big or little, the initials and figures 
'* N. L. f. 1835, S. L. t. 1855," which being interpreted 
read, "Father found it in 1835, and I tried it in 1855." 



"The Rise of Silas Lapham " 15 

By analysis a man from Boston showed that the ore con- 
tained seventy-five per cent of the peroxide of iron, and 
the scientific phrase was pronounced by Lapham with a 
sort of reverent satisfaction, being accented as if it were 
spelled " purr-ox-<?y<?^/. " Silas enthusiastically related 
how the expert sat down and told him that he had a 
paint that would drive every other mineral paint out of 
the market. " ' Why,' says he, ' it'll drive 'em right into 
the Back Bay ! That paint has got hydraulic cement in 
it, and it can stand fire and water and acids. When 
you've got your arrangements for burning it properly, 
you're going to have a paint that will stand like the ever- 
lasting hills, in every climate under the sun.'" And then, 
after Lapham himself had indulged in a eulogy of the 
manifold virtues of his paint, detailing how it could be 
used on the inside of a cistern, or a bath-tub, or a steam- 
boiler, or on the outside of a brick wall, or a railroad car, 
or a steamboat deck, the newspaper man naively sug- 
gested, " Never tried it on the human conscience, I sup- 
pose." To which Lapham gravely replied, " I guess you 
want to keep that as free from paint as you can, if you 
want much use of it. I never cared to try any of it on 
mine." 

On shelves over his office desk Lapham pointed out with 
peculiar pride the finest grade of his paint put up in flaw- 
less glass jars, with the different tints showing through ; 
and Bartley read on one of the labels, ''The Persis Brand," 
which Lapham said, with much satisfaction, he had put 
on the market in honor of his wife on her last birthday. 
In his grateful pride over the stanch cooperation of his 
wife in their early struggles to succeed with the paint, 
Lapham reminded his interviewer how he used to say. 



1 6 Provincial Types in New England 

" It wa'n't the seventy-five per cent of purr-ox-eyed of iron 
in the 07'e that made that paint go ; it was the seventy-five 
per cent of purr-ox-eyed of iron in her.'^ 

Lapham's esthetic sense could find nothing wrong in 
covering the scenery with advertisements of his paint, and, 
as he told Hubbard, he never could see anything so very 
sacred about a big rock that it wouldn't do to put mineral 
paint on it in three colors. " I wish some of the people 
that talk about the landscape, and write about it, had to 
bu'st one of them rocks out of the landscape with powder, 
or dig a hole to bury it in, as we used to have to do up on 
the farm ; I guess they'd sing a little different tune about 
the profanation of scenery." On Lapham's insisting 
that the landscape was made for man, and not man for the 
landscape, his interviewer ironically remarked, " Yes, it was 
made for the stove-polish man and the kidney-cure man;" 
and when Silas, in his attempt to resume his narrative, asked 
where he was, Bartley softly suggested, "decorating the 
landscape." 

But the Civil War proved too much for the mineral 
paint, and Lapham's wife, seeing a providence in the failure 
to sell it, recognized that he had a country worth fighting 
for, " Well, sir, I went. I knew she meant business. 
It might kill her to have me go, but it would kill her sure 
if I stayed." And the fruit of his going was a ball in his 
leg, which he called his " thermometer." His return from 
the war was the beginning of wider operations in the paint 
business, and, much against his will but with his wife's 
urgent advice, he took a partner with capital, who knew 
nothing about paint ; and in a year or two the partner 
withdrew with, as Bartley suggested, " the experience." 
This episode, as Bartley surmised, was the sore spot in 



"The Rise of Silas Lapham " ly 

Silas's memory, and was to have a ruinous significance in 
his later hfe. But as he went on, Lapham's enthusiasm 
over his paint grew unbounded, — his paint was almost 
his religion. " You pass a ton of that paint dry through 
a blast-furnace, and you'll get a quarter of a ton of pig- 
iron. I believe in my paint. I believe it's a blessing to 
the world. When folks come in, and kind of smell round, 
and ask me what I mix it with, I always say, ' Well, in the 
first place, I mix it with Faith, and after that I grind it up 
with the best quality of boiled linseed oil that money will 
buy.' " 

Leaving his interviewer at the newspaper office, Lapham 
drove to Nankeen Square at the South End of Boston, 
where he had not built, but had bought very cheap, — with 
a characteristic sense for a bargain, — a house that be- 
longed to a " terrified gentleman of good extraction who 
discovered too late that the South End was not the thins:, 
and who, in the eagerness of his flight to the Back Bay, 
threw in his carpets and shades for almost nothing." 
Neither Silas Lapham nor his sensible, self-reliant wife 
had ever felt the personal disadvantage of being in an 
unfashionable neighborhood ; but after Mrs. Lapham and 
her daughters had accidentally, on a summer trip to a 
Canadian watering-place, been thrown in somewhat inti- 
mate contact with a cultivated and aristocratic Boston 
family with an eligible son in it, it began to suggest itself 
that a new home '' on the water side of Beacon Street " 
might be a social advantage to the daughters. 

In discussing with her husband the impression these 
refined Bostonians had made on her, — they made her feel, 
she said, " as if we had always lived in the backwoods," 
— she asked him if he knew them, and added, with 



1 8 Provincial Types in New England 

reference to the head of the family, " What busi- 
ness is he in ? " "I guess he ain't in anything," said 
Lapham. "They were very nice," said Mrs. Lapham, in 
impartial tone. " Well, they'd ought to be," returned the 
Colonel, — "never done anything else." When his wife 
insisted that they never seemed " stuck up," her husband 
with the all-sufficient pride of new-won wealth ironically 
answered, "They'd no need to — with you. I could buy 
him and sell him, twice over." In illustration of his proud 
financial ability, when his wife received from Mrs. Corey 
a lithographed circular asking for subscriptions to a very 
praiseworthy charity, Lapham promptly drew his check 
for five hundred dollars, which his wife promptly tore in 
two, remarking as she did so that a hundred would do, as 
she " didn't want to show off before them." 

After much artful broaching of the subject of building 
on his new lot in Beacon Street, the Colonel persuaded his 
wife to drive over and see the site, and as they jogged 
along they talked of the different kinds of architecture along 
the streets and admired the worst. Now and then they 
noticed a young man lifting his hat in response to some 
salutation from a window, and it suggested to Lapham that 
his own girls wouldn't " look very bad behind one of those 
big panes." This called to the mother's mind the thought 
of the young Corey whom they had met the summer before 
in Canada and been so much impressed by. Upon her 
husband's inquiry as to whether the young man was with 
his family in Boston, and her reply that he was on a ranch 
in Texas with a friend and had apparently got something 
to do, the Colonel sarcastically commented, with all the 
confidence of an energetic business man, " Yes ; gentle- 
maning as a profession has got to play out in a generation 



"The Rise of Silas Lapham " 19 

or two." At "tea'' that evening, with Penelope and 
Irene, the two daughters, his wife, in her affectionate 
banter, intimated that if her husband wanted to he could 
run his own furnace and shovel his own sidewalk — until 
he got over to Beacon Street anyway. Whereupon the 
redoubtable Colonel asserted, " A man can be a man on 
Beacon Street as well as anywhere, I guess." " Well, I'll do 
the wash, as I used to in Lumberville," said Mrs. Lapham. 
" I presume you'll let me have set tubs, Si." But, despite 
the joking about it, the Colonel seemed really to have made 
up his mind to build on "the water side of Beacon." 

Lapham's architectural ideas were definite enough, but 
they were curiously antiquated and inharmonious. In the 
merciless hands of an architect, however, a revolution was 
wrought in the Colonel's crude ideas of a house ; for, as 
the author remarks, nearly all architects are skillful in 
playing upon " that simple instrument, Man." Of all the 
construction the pile-driving interested Lapham most, and 
every day he would drive over with his wife to see and 
hear the engine carry the big iron weight to the top of the 
framework and let it drop with a mighty force on the iron- 
bound head of the pile. " By gracious ! " he would say, 
" there ain't anything like that in this world for business, 
Persis ! " One day, as they were inspecting the new house, 
the Colonel's former partner, Rogers, whom Lapham 
had crowded out just before his great success came, ap- 
peared on the scene and made a very uncomfortable 
situation. His wife accused Lapham of having made his 
paint his god, and charged him with not being able to look 
his old partner in the face, — at which Lapham lost his 
temper, turned his horse suddenly toward home, and re- 
marked hotly, "I guess you don't want to ride with me 



20 Provincial Types in New England 

any more to-day." His wife, in her indignation, had the 
last word : " Don't you ask me to go to that house with 
you any more. You can sell it, for all me. I shan't live 
in it. There's blood on it." Yet they ignored their 
quarrel later, and the wife recognized that in a way his 
paint was something more than a business to him ; it was 
a sentiment, and almost a passion, — the poetry of a nature 
that was otherwise so intensely prosaic. 

A few days later the family went over to look at the 
interior arrangements of the house ; and when at the fa- 
ther's invitation the daughters sat by his side on a trestle in 
the bay window and somewhat scornfully laughed at the 
position, the Colonel, rather enjoying their superior ways, 
reminded them that their mother wasn't ashamed to sit 
with him on a trestle the first time he ever tried his paint 
on a house. " Yes ; we've heard that story," said Penel- 
ope, ■' we were brought up on that story." 

Upon young Corey's unexpected entrance and his intro- 
duction to the father, the Colonel, with a little shock to 
his rather sensitive daughters, jocularly asked, ** Have a 
trestle ? " And in a free and somewhat boastful tone the 
Colonel enlarged upon his ideas and plans, declaring that 
there wouldn't be an unpleasant room in the house, and 
that they were going to have the best rooms for themselves, 
and that he had the best architect in Boston, " And if 
money can do it, I guess I'm going to be suited. ... I 
started out to build a forty thousand house. Well, sir ! 
that fellow has got me in for more than sixty thousand 
already, and I doubt if I get out of it much under a hun- 
dred. . . . It's just like ordering a picture of a painter. 
You pay him enough, and he can afford to paint you a 
first-class picture." 



"The Rise of Silas Laphani " 21 

Young Corey's appreciative remark as to how well the 
Memorial Hall and the Cambridge spires worked up from 
the bay window started another egotistical strain of garrulity 
on the Colonel's part : " Yes, sir, it's about the sightliest 
view I know of. I always did like the water side of 
Beacon. . . . When they talk about Commonwealth 
Avenue, I don't know what they mean. It don't hold a 
candle to the water side of Beacon." The Colonel's 
continued assertiveness was hard for his daughters to 
hear, and when they got home Penelope, the elder, enter- 
tained her sister Irene with a very good imitation of 
her father's characteristic talk. However, in recounting 
his experience at the new Lapham house, Tom Corey 
said to his father, with reference to the Colonel : " Do 
you know that, in spite of his syntax, I rather like him ? . . . 
He struck me as very simple-hearted and rather wholesome. 
Of course he could be tiresome ; we all can ; and I suppose 
his range of ideas is limited. But he is a force, and not 
a bad one." And the Colonel on his part had taken a 
great liking to Tom Corey, remarking emphatically to his 
wife, " If I had that fellow in the business with me, I 
would make a man of him." 

What was his delighted surprise, a few days after, 
to have the identical young man, son of the well- 
known and aristocratic Bromfield Corey, open his office 
door and ask if the Colonel would take him into 
the mineral paint business ! The Colonel would have 
given any sum of money if his wife could have over- 
heard the request, the approaches of the aristocratic 
are so gratifying to the ambitious pride of the suddenly 
rich. But Mrs. Corey's insinuation that young Corey 
would feel himself too good for the mineral paint busi- 



22 Provincial Types in New England 

ness made the Colonel a little resentful, and his first 
attitude toward the young man was that of making him 
appreciate how good a thing the Lapham paint was. 
However, when young Corey declared that he had 
already made inquiries about the paint and believed in it, 
Lapham warmed and softened toward him in every way. 
He enthusiastically showed him a photograph of the 
locality of the mine, adding, as if the photographic art 
had slighted the features of some beloved face, " it don't 
half do the place justice." Then he went on and on, 
telling his paint story with loving and unsparing detail. 
Although the young man offered to represent the business 
in foreign parts without salary and purely on a com- 
mission, the matter could not be settled so quickly, and 
the Colonel took him down to his summer cottage at 
Nantasket to consider the proposition more fully. And 
when, at the landing, he took the reins from his coachman 
and told Corey to get into the back seat with his daughter 
Penelope, who had driven to the boat for her father, 
the Colonel gave her a wink of supreme content at 
having so unexpected and aristocratic a guest, and exulted 
in his prospective triumph over Mrs. Lapham. As he 
would himself have said, he was feeling "about right." 
The matter of business having been fairly settled after 
''tea," the family and their guest met in the parlor; and 
a volume of " Middlemarch " lying on the table suggested 
to Corey a question about George Eliot, which only dis- 
closed the fact that the younger daughter, Irene, did not 
know who she was. Lapham declared himself in favor of 
stereopticon lectures and the theater — something to make 
you laugh, and confessed that all he could find time to 
read was newspapers. " When the girls want a novel, I 



" The Rise of Silas Lapham " 23 

tell 'em to get it out of the library. That's what the 
library's for." Lapham was hardly a bibliophile, though 
as near to being one as many other business men in 
modern life. 

When, by what he imagined was his finesse, he got the 
girls to take Mr. Corey out to show him the night view of 
the hotels from the rocks, he exultingly gave his wife a 
detailed account of how the young man happened to be 
their guest. To his wife's mind the chief significance of 
Corey's request to come into the business was its supposed 
reference to their younger daughter's hand ; and her hus- 
band had evidently thought of the same thing, although he 
pretended that it had never occurred to him before. But 
his wife penetrated his thin disguise and reminded him 
that if the young man didn't " take a fancy " to Irene, the 
Colonel could hardly do him justice, even if he had taken 
him into the business. The Colonel protested against this 
interpretation of his motives and his ambition for his 
daughter; but in reality having this scion of a well-known 
family, with an assured social position, apply for a place 
in his business and possibly, later, for his daughter's hand, 
made up one of the sweetest moments in his success. Next 
to winning the school-teacher in Lumberville as his wife, 
the possibility of Corey's permanent connection with his 
family had moved his heavy imagination. 

Yet in all his business relations with young Corey he 
was careful to preserve the pride that comes from self- 
making, and he in no way distinguished the young man 
from the rest of his clerks. Indirectly his immense satis- 
faction over the presence of Corey in his office would 
be illustrated by some such remark as the following : 
" Did you notice that fellow at the desk facing my type- 



24 Provincial Types in New England 

writer girl ? Well, sir, that's the son of Bromfield Corey — 
old Phillips Corey's grandson. . . . He's got charge of 
the foreign correspondence. We're pushing the paint 
everywhere." 

His actual liking for the young fellow and genuine ap- 
preciation of his parts even deflected the Colonel's earlier 
judgment on the qualifications essential to business suc- 
cess. " I used to believe in what old Horace Greeley 
said about college graduates being the poorest kind of 
horned cattle ; but I've changed my mind a little. You 
take that fellow Corey. He's been through Harvard. . . . 
Been everywhere, and talks half a dozen languages like 
English. I suppose he's got money enough to live with- 
out lifting a hand, any more than his father does ; son of 
Bromfield Corey, you know. But the thing was in him. 
He's a natural-born business man ; and I've had many a 
fellow with me that had come up out of the street, and 
worked hard all his life, without ever losing his original 
opposition to the thing. But Corey likes it. I don't know 
where he got it. I guess it must be his grandfather, old 
Phillips Corey; it often skips a generation, you know." 
And then the paint manufacturer grew sagely philosophical 
and spoke with all the certainty of self-sufficient knowl- 
edge : " What I say is, a thing has got to be born in a 
man ; and if it ain't born in him, all the privations in the 
world won't put it there, and if it is, all the college train- 
ing won't take it out." 

All efforts of the Colonel to bring the young Corey 
down to Nantasket to see his family were thwarted by the 
ridicule of his wife, whose pride forbade any " running 
after " the young man as a match for their daughter Irene. 
All of Lapham's subterfuges and thin disguises with that 



"The Rise of Silas Lap ham " 25 

in view were penetrated by his wife's quick intuition, much 
to his irritation. But he always had his mare as a last 
resort for a spin with Corey out over the Milldam, when 
Lapham's chief topics of conversation were his horse and 
his paint, the new house and himself. 

Lapham's special resentment seemed directed against 
Bromfield Corey, the father of his new clerk, because he 
made no call upon him and no social advances ; but his 
wife, with all her sensitive pride, could see things as they 
were and could recognize that the two families had en- 
tirely different social relations. Her husband would ask 
indignantly: " Are they any better than we are ? My note 
of hand would be worth ten times what Bromfield Corey's 
is on the street to-day. And I made my money. I haven't 
loafed my life away." To which came the penetrating 
retort of the wife : " Oh, it isn't what you've got, and it 
isn't what you've done exactly. It's what you are." 

By the masterly diplomacy of his architect the Colonel 
went on from one outlay to another, under the delusion, 
often, that what the architect had deftly won he himself 
had seen or perhaps conceived, until his prudent wife was 
impelled to call a halt and limit the cost of the new house 
to a hundred thousand dollars. Incidentally, in account- 
ing for the fact that he had an abundance of money to put 
into his building scheme, he confessed that he had been mak- 
ing a very good thing in stocks. *' In stocks ? When did 
you take up gambling for a living ? " And the guilty hus- 
band protestingly replied, " Gambling? Stuff! What gam- 
bling? Who said it was gambling ? " And when his wife 
reminded him that that was what he once called gambling, 
his naive defense took this form of explanation : " Oh, yes, 
buying and selling on a margin. But this was a bona fide 



26 Provincial Types in New England 

transaction. I bought at forty-three for an investment, 
and I sold at a hundred and seven ; and the money passed 
both times." His wife's warning prophecy, however, was, 
" Next time you'll buy at a hundred and seven and sell at 
forty-three. Then where'll you be?" "Left," admitted 
the Colonel. And his wife's final injunction was, " You 
better stick to paint awhile yet." 

One night the Colonel came down to their summer cot- 
tage at Nantasket with a peculiarly radiant air, and after 
long guessing on his wife's part he divulged, with much 
happiness and a sense of relief, that greatly to his surprise 
his former partner Rogers — whom he had crowded out 
of the paint business at a time when he saw a large future 
for it — had called and asked for a loan, and Lapham 
had granted it on practically worthless security. The 
loan he made was of the money his wife had prevented 
him from putting into the new house. His wife joyfully 
saw in the whole transaction a kindly providence, and 
said approvingly, "You've taken the one spot — the one 
speck — off you that was ever there, and I'm satisfied." 
" There wa'n't ever any speck there," Lapham doggedly 
protested, "and what I done I done for you, Persis." 
But this generosity for his wife's sake, by the irony of fate, 
was later to aid in his undoing. 

The long-looked-for call from Bromfield Cory had the 
effect on Lapham of stirring his characteristic boastfulness, 
and there was much self-satisfaction in the Colonel's 
praise of young Corey as if he were a mere office-boy. 
" I had faith in him, and I saw that he meant business 
from the start." All this to illustrate in part his own 
shrewd penetration. And when the father modestly and 
humorously remarked that he was afraid his son hadn't 



" The Rise of Silas Lapham " 27 

inherited such business quaHties from him, the Colonel 
compassionately said, '' Well, sir, we can't help those 
things. Some of us have got it, and some of us haven't. 
The idea is to make the piosf of what we /lave got." Then 
he impressed upon his caller that his own (Lapham's) 
latent strength came into full consciousness only by the 
development of experience ; and he added somewhat 
patronizingly : " And I can see that it's going to be just 
so with your son. His going through college won't hurt 
him, — he'll soon slough all that off, — and his bringing up 
won't; don't be anxious about it." He found it neces- 
sary, also, to call Mr. Corey's attention to T/ie Events^ in 
which Lapham's biography had appeared, but unfortu- 
nately Bromfield Corey read only the Boston Daily Adver- 
tiser. In reporting Corey's call that night to his wife, 
Lapham said, " Don't know as I ever saw a much pleas- 
anter man. Dunno but what he's about the pleasantest 
man I ever did see." And then Mr. Howells, with an illu- 
minating touch, makes this significant comment : " He was 
not letting his wife see in his averted face the struggle 
that revealed itself there — the struggle of stalwart 
achievement not to feel flattered at the notice of sterile 
elegance, not to be sneakingly glad of its amiability, but 
to stand up and look at it with eyes on the same level." 

On the spur of Corey's call the Colonel's social ambition 
took a leap, — he told his wife that he was going to push 
the new house, and at least invite Corey to " a fish din- 
ner at Taft's " ; whereupon his wife's contempt knew no 
bounds. That night the Colonel failed to rest well ; he 
failed to appear at the office next day, and young Corey 
came down to Nantasket to inquire about his health. 
Mrs. Lapham insisted on her husband's not showing him- 



2 8 Provincial Types in New England 

self in his dressing-gown, and when the visitor met the 
vanquished Colonel indoors the latter was still buttoning 
up his double-breasted frock-coat. But a courteous call 
of inquiry after one's health was not the usual thing in 
Lapham's circle, and surprise was mingled with gratifica- 
tion at the young man's polite solicitude. Corey's re- 
peated visits began to make Mrs. Lapham feel that in 
some way they were taking advantage of his family's 
absence from the city ; but the Colonel remarked that the 
young man was of age, and indignantly declared, " To 
hear you talk, you'd think those Coreys were too good for 
this world, and we wa'n't fit for 'em to walk on." As his 
indignation grew his language became more emphatic ; 
" Once for all, now, don't you ever let me hear you say 
anything like that again ! I'm worth nigh on to a million, 
and I've made it every cent myself; and my girls are 
the equals of anybody, I don't care who it is." Thus, 
here and there, the pride of his honest manhood mingles 
with the pride of his self-created success, despite his sense 
of social deficiency. 

The Corey invitation to dinner naturally created in the 
Lapham family something of a sensation. In the formal 
note of invitation, Mrs. Corey had spoken of " General " 
Lapham, and the Colonel's comment at supper had a touch 
of his characteristic humor in it : "I didn't know I was a 
general. I guess I shall have to be looking up my back pay." 
In accepting the invitation, Mrs. Lapham, who had no spe- 
cial sense " of the awful and binding nature of a dinner invi- 
tation," made no mention of the fact that her elder daughter 
Penelope had refused to go, and in the hope that her daugh- 
ter might relent, cherished the easy belief that her absence 
might be readily excused after the Laphams' arrival at the 



'' The Rise of Silas Lapham " 29 

dinner party. In her note of acceptance Mrs. Lapham, 
after long hesitation between her husband's given name 
and her own, signed herself, " Yours truly, Mrs. S. 
Lapham." 

What to wear at a formal dinner party was the next 
momentous question to harass the breasts of the Lapham 
family. The wife and mother anxiously remarked, " / 
don't know what to wear ; or the girls either. I do won- 
der — I've heard that people go to dinner in low necks. 
Do you suppose it's the custom ? " 

"How should /know?" demanded the Colonel. "I 
guess you've got clothes enough. Any rate, you needn't 
fret about it. You just go round to White's or Jordan & 
Marsh's, and ask for a dinner dress. I guess that'll settle 
it ; they'll know. Get some of them imported dresses. I 
see 'em in the window every time I pass, lots of 'em." 

The Colonel's bravery of attitude began soon, however, 
to weaken under all the dress-making effort and discussion 
in the house, and vague apprehensions in regard to his 
own clothes hovered in the background of his imagination. 
'' An ideal of the figure in which he should go presented 
itself to his mind. He should not wear any dress-coat, 
because, for one thing, he considered that a man looked 
like a fool in a dress-coat, and, for another thing, he had 
none — had none on principle. He would go in a frock- 
coat and black pantaloons, and perhaps a white waistcoat, 
but a black cravat anyway." But this ideal was too much 
for the rest of the family, and particularly his daughter 
Irene, who recalled how a few years before he had been 
the only person without a dress-coat at a corps reunion 
dinner. And she remembered her awful feeling about it 
at the time. Even his wife, who would ordinarily have 



JO Provincial Types in New England 

admired his independent attitude, shook her head, and 
remarked apprehensively, " I don't see but what you'll 
have to get you one. Si. I don't believe they ever go with- 
out 'em to a private house." 

Openly confident, he nevertheless, on the next day, " cast 
anchor before his tailor's door and got measured for a 
dress-coat." Next he was torn with doubt as to his waist- 
coat, but, buying a book of etiquette for the purpose, he 
found that it decided against white waistcoats. He began, 
also, to waver on black cravats, and on the critical subject 
of gloves the book of etiquette also said nothing. Drops 
of perspiration gathered on the Colonel's forehead in the 
strenuousness of this inner debate ; he groaned, and even 
swore a little in the " compromise profanity " that was 
peculiar to him. His ironical daughter Penelope naively 
asked why he didn't go to Jordan & Marsh's and order 
one of the imported dresses for himself. This gave them 
all the relief of a laugh, but it was a painful laugh for the 
Colonel. The Colonel devised in his own mind how, by 
an incidental question to young Corey in the office, he 
might find out all about dinner gloves, but his provincial 
pride kept him from even a mention of the prospective 
dinner. However, he finally bought a pair, and on the 
night of the dinner, as he stood on the landing of the Corey 
staircase waiting for his wife and daughter to come down, 
his saffron-tinted gloves (the tint had been recommended 
by the shop-girl) on his large fists made them look sug- 
gestively "like canvassed hams." ''He stood staring at 
his hands, now open and now shut, and breathing hard." 
Suddenly young Tom Corey appeared, and when the 
Colonel discovered that his host's son wore no gloves, he 
began with an assumed indifference to pull off his own. 



"The Rise of Silas Lapham ** 31 

Mrs. Lapham had decided against low necks, and had 
'* intrenched herself in the safety of a black silk," while 
Irene, her daughter, "trailed a delicate splendor across 
the carpet in her mother's wake." Lapham himself, thank- 
ing God that he should have been spared the shame of 
wearing gloves where no one else did, yet at the same 
time depressed that Corey should have seen him in them, 
had " an unwonted aspect of almost pathetic refinement." 

Addressing herself to Mr. Lapham, the hostess, Mrs. 
Corey, called him " General " Lapham ; the honest man 
modestly protested, " No, ma'am, only Colonel," but the 
correction was lost upon his hostess. When he failed to 
get clearly the name of the person to whom he was intro- 
duced, he held the' person's hand, and leaning sympatheti- 
cally forward, inquired, " What name ? " — a social method 
he was quite sure was right because it had been used with 
himself by some great man to whom he had been intro- 
duced on a public platform. When the hostess, being 
under the impression apparently that the elder Lapham 
daughter was still in the dressing-room, asked if she could 
send any one to be of assistance to her, Mrs. Lapham, 
turning fire-red, bluntly said in her embarrassment, " She 
isn't upstairs. She didn't feel just like coming to-night. 
I don't know as she's feeling very well." Mrs. Corey, the 
hostess, "emitted a very small 'O!' — very small, very 
cold, — which began to grow larger and hotter and to 
burn into Mrs. Lapham's soul " before Mrs. Corey, the 
lady, expressed her regret, and her hope that there was 
nothing serious. 

In their determination not to be the first at the dinner 
party, Mrs. Lapham perceived they had really been the 
last to arrive and must have kept the other guests waiting. 



32 Provincial Types in New England 

The hostess slipped her hand through the Colonel's arm^ 
and they passed out to dinner last of all, though why the 
Colonel did not know. As he sank into his seat, a long 
sigh of relief came from Mr. Lapham, for he now felt sure 
if he only watched the others he could keep himself safe 
from blunder. The hostess's cousin, James Bellingham, 
had a little mannerism of tucking the corner of his napkin 
into his collar, and thereupon the Colonel followed suit ; 
but seeing that no one but Bellingham did so, he became 
doubtful and slyly pulled it out. On principle the Colonel 
was a prohibitionist, and he apprehensively fingered the 
wine-glasses in his effort to decide whether to turn them 
all down, as he had once seen a well-known politician do. 
But it seemed a rather conspicuous thing to do, and so he 
let the servant fill them all, and drank from each so as not 
to appear peculiar. He was not at all sure that he ought 
not to decline some of the dishes or at least leave most of 
some of them on his plate. However, in his dilemma he 
took everything and ate everything. 

The Colonel noted with satisfaction that his wife seemed 
to be holding her own with Mr. Corey, the host, and he 
himself was getting on famously with the hostess, who had 
the intuition to introduce the subject of his new house. 
But in- the general conversation about the creative side of 
architecture, social settlement work, and the function of the 
modern novel, the Colonel despairingly lost his bearings ; 
and whenever something appropriate to what they were 
saying came into his mind he was unable to get it out before 
they were off on something else ; '' they jumped about so, 
he could not keep up," and he had a general uneasy feel- 
ing that he was not doing himself justice. Being thirsty, 
and not liking to ask for more water, he freely drank the 



" The Rise of Silas Lapham" ^3 

wine, and it was beginning to have its effect on his unac- 
customed brain. 

When the ladies withdrew to the other room and 
the Colonel sat with the gentlemen, he felt more at 
home with the fuming cigar between his lips. He turned 
sidewise in his chair, intertwined the fingers of both 
hands, and smoked -'at large ease." References were 
made to the carnage of a particular battle of the Civil 
War in which the Colonel had been engaged as a mem- 
ber of a Vermont regiment, and it was evidently expected 
that he would have something interesting to say in the 
way of reminiscence ; but all he was able to get out was a 
slight confirmatory remark. Now and then the haze that 
seemed to envelop his mind would clear away, and allow 
him some brief significant word that naturally called for 
more ; and finally he was able to tell them a little story 
about a fellow in his own company that sacrificed his life 
for the Colonel's. The story was effective enough, as told 
in the Colonel's simple, vivid way, to make an impression. 
The Colonel felt it and was going to deepen that impres- 
sion, when another glass of wine seemed suddenly to make 
his brain a blank, and the host came to the rescue with, 
*' Shall we join the ladies ? " 

The Colonel noticed that his daughter Irene was look- 
ing beautiful, but not talking much, and under the exhila- 
rating influence of the wine he now perceived that a 
dinner party was the place to talk. He had, in fact, a 
certain consciousness of having talked very well himself ; 
he now carried an air of great dignity, and assumed a 
grave and weighty deliberateness. He was invited into 
the hbrary, where he, of course, had to give his ideas on 
books, remarking, as he did so, that newspapers were 



34 Provincial Types in New England 

about all he could find time for. He thanked Bromfield 
Corey for his son's suggestion of books for his new 
library, and he also announced that he was going to have 
pictures. He even asked Mr. Corey " who was about the 
best American painter going now." He rapidly grew 
boastful, under the relaxing effect of the wine, and nat- 
urally swung off from pictures to his own mineral paint. 
He offered to have Mr. Corey run up with him to the 
Works, where he could also show him some of the finest 
Jersey grades in the country ; he told about his brother 
William, the judge in Dubuque, and a farm out there of 
his own that paid for itself every year in wheat. Losing all 
fear, he lifted his voice and hammered the chair by way 
of emphasis. Bromfield Corey seemed impressed, and the 
other gentlemen would stop now and then to look at the 
Colonel ; so that the latter was surprised himself by his 
ease among men whose names he had previously stood in 
awe of. He grew familiar, and called his host by his sur- 
name alone ; and noticing young Corey, the Colonel took 
occasion to tell the company how he had once said to his 
wife that he could make a man of him if he had him in 
the business. In fact, the Colonel soon had all the talk 
to himself, and he talked unceasingly, feeling, as he did 
so, that it was all a great social triumph. 

Word came that Mrs. Lapham was going, but he refused 
to hurry ; he cordially invited each of the gentlemen pres- 
ent to drop in and see him at his office, and made them 
promise to do so ; and he genially remarked to James 
Bellingham that it had always been his ambition to know 
him, and that if any one had said, when he first came to 
Boston, that in ten years he should be hobnobbing with 
Jim Bellingham, he should have told that person he lied. 



"The Rise of Silas Lap ham " 35 

He would also have told anybody he lied that had told 
him, ten years ago, that a son of Bromfield Corey would 
come and ask him to take him into the business. And 
thus the man's real secret feeling of immense gratification 
over his present social privilege came vulgarly and piti- 
fully to the surface. 

The Colonel even specified the amount of his fortune 
and how many thousand dollars he had just loaned his 
former partner ; with " patronizing affection " he took 
leave of the minister, telling him to come around if he got 
into " a tight place " with his parish work ; and turning to 
his host, Bromfield Corey, he jocularly remarked, " Why, 
when your wife sent to mine last fall, I drew a check for 
five hundred dollars, but my wife wouldn't take more than 
one hundred; said she wasn't going to show off before 
Mrs. Corey. I call that a pretty good joke on Mrs. 
Corey. I must tell her how Mrs. Lapham done her out of 
a cool four hundred dollars." And then he went away 
without saying good night to his hostess ! "In the cold 
gray light of the [next] morning the glories of the night 
before showed poorer. Here and there a painful doubt 
obtruded itself and marred them with its awkward 
shadow." And in his office that morning he turned to 
Tom Corey, son of his host, and demanded, " Was I drunk 
last night ? " 

The abject self-abasement of his employer. Colonel 
Lapham, in the presence of young Corey, as if he were 
suddenly made aware of an intrinsic social inferiority that 
was hopeless ; the agony of his discovery that the young 
man had really been loving his oldest daughter Penelope, 
instead of the beautiful but somewhat insipid Irene, 
through whom the ambitious Colonel and his wife had 



^6 Provincial Types in New England 

ardently hoped for a social alliance with the aristocratic 
Coreys ; and the Colonel's appeal in his helpless misery 
to the minister, Mr. Sewell, whom he met at the Corey 
dinner, — are moving and dramatic phases in the develop- 
ment of this crude, strong provincial type that is suddenly 
called upon to face strange conditions and new forces in 
its widening life. His almost inarticulate sympathy with 
the stolid suffering of Irene, and his steadfast sense of 
justice to the other daughter who had been the innocent 
cause of this suffering, illustrate the depth of love and the 
spirit of fairness inherent in Lapham's nature. 

In his effort to deal generously with his old partner, 
Rogers, — whom he had forced out of the paint business 
at a time when its future was assured, — Lapham had, as 
he phrased it, been throwing good money after bad ; and 
for the sake of his wife, who was particularly sensitive as 
to the Colonel's former treatment of his partner, Lapham 
had gone deeper into Rogers's financial schemes than he 
really wanted to or judged was best. He casually but 
meaningly remarked to his wife in connection with the 
matter that " pretty near everybody but the fellows that 
owe me seem to expect me to do a cash business, all of a 
sudden." His wife's question of alarm brought out his re- 
assurance that it was all right. " I ain't going to let the 
grass grow under my feet, though, — especially while 
Rogers digs the ground away from the roots." '^ If it has 
to come to that, I'm going to squeeze him." The Colonel's 
face lighted up with the joy of expected revenge. " Milton 
K. Rogers is a rascal, if you want to know. . . . But I 
guess he'll find he's got his come-uppance." And then the 
Colonel proceeded to tell his wife how Rogers, by dab- 
bling in wildcat stocks, patent-rights, land speculations. 



"The Rise of Silas Lapham '* 37 

and oil claims, had " run through about everything," and 
how with a certain big mill property he should have gotten 
rich. " But you can't make Milton K. Rogers rich, any 
more than you can fat a hide-bound colt. It ain't in him. 
He'd run through Vanderbilt, Jay Gould, and Tom Scott 
rolled into one in less than six months, give him a chance, 
and come out and want to borrow money of you." The 
Colonel's vow was thereupon registered never to let this 
Rogers borrow from him again. 

In his effort to get back what he had already loaned 
Rogers, Lapham had become more deeply implicated, and 
in his confession to his wife he made a clean breast of it. 
She, recalling how she had urged her husband to make 
restitution to his old partner for having forced him out of 
the paint business, fixed the blame entirely upon herself. 
" She came back to this, with her helpless longing, inbred 
in all Puritan souls, to have some one specifically 
suffer for the evil in the world, even if it must be 
herself." 

But when the opportunity presented itself of getting rid 
of the mill property that had fallen into Lapham's hands 
as security in his dealing with Rogers, Lapham's robust 
but tempted honesty and sense of fair play proved so 
strong that it stood in the way of his own financial recov- 
ery. And this rugged virtue of exact honesty and charac- 
teristic sense of fair play were confirmed, though sadly, 
by his sympathetic and courageous wife. Her pride in 
him was one of his strongest props in the strain of great 
emergencies. She was willing to fall with him, so long as 
in that fall their honor and honesty were retained. Yet 
she tried to be optimistic for his sake : *' I don't suppose 
but what there's plenty would help you if they knew you 



3 8 Provincial Types in New England 

needed it, Si." But the husband sardonically replied : 
" They would if they knew I didn't need it." 

The fluctuations in Lapham's affairs told upon his face 
and temper, — he grew old and thin and irascible, and his 
wife and daughter Penelope had to endure in the home 
the silence or the petulance of the gloomy, secret man. 
His troubles thickened when he was least able to bear 
them, — he was obliged to shut down the Works at Lap- 
ham, where the fire had never been out since it was first 
kindled, a fact he had always bragged about as "the 
last expression of his sense of success " ; a new and 
equally good West Virginia paint, which could be pro- 
duced by a cheaper fuel, had come into the market, 
already overstocked, with a competition that could not 
be met; the suddenly roused jealousy of his wife — 
though in fact due to a misinterpretation of his unselfish 
charity toward a drunken widow and her daughter — for 
a time isolated him from her helpful sympathy ; and, last 
of all, he was compelled to make up his mind to sell his 
new house, which had stood for so much in his hopes and 
ideals. Yet the Colonel's depression was often alternated 
with the spirit of optimism, when by some vague imagina- 
tion it seemed to him that all things would in some mirac- 
ulous way be made right. " The process of Lapham's 
financial disintegration was like the course of some 
chronic disorder which has fastened itself upon the 
constitution, but advances with continual reliefs, with 
apparent amelioration, and at times seems not to 
advance at all, when it gives hope of final recovery 
not only to the sufferer but to the eye of science." 
Lapham's adversity was not always like " the adversity 
we figure in allegory ; it had its moments of being like 



" The Rise of Silas Lapham " 39 

prosperity, and if upon the whole it was continual, it was 
not incessant." 

In shrinking from the making of an assignment because 
of its publicity, he even determined, as already suggested, 
upon the sale of his new house " on the water side of 
Beacon Street." But his pride would not allow the prop- 
erty to be described or his own name given by the broker 
unless "parties meant business." In fact, there did come 
a specific offer from some one who had seen the house in 
the fall to pay for it what it had cost up to that time. But 
so much of his hope for himself and his children had gone 
into the house that the thought of selling it made him 
tremulous and sick. With his nerves shaken by want of 
sleep and the shock of this sudden question of sale, Lap- 
ham left his office early and went at sunset to look at his 
house and come to some conclusion. The very street 
lamps, as they flared down the beautiful perspective 
toward the sunset, seemed to Silas not merely a part of 
the landscape, but " a part of his pride and glory, his suc- 
cess, his triumphant life's work, which was fading into 
failure in his helpless hands." He looked up and recalled 
how he and his daughter Irene had stood one night before 
the house and she had said that she should never live 
there. There was no such fagade on the street, he thought ; 
the whole design " appealed to him as an exquisite bit of 
harmony appeals to the unlearned ear." He went up into 
the music room, and the whim seized him to test the chim- 
ney by a fire in the grate. He watched the burning shav- 
ings and blocks as he sat on a nail-keg and noted the 
chimney's success, and the proud resolution came to him 
never to sell the house so long as he had a dollar. Hav- 
ing optimistically smoked his cigar, he stamped upon 



40 Provincial Types in New England 

the embers still aglow and went home with a buoyant 
heart. 

But alas ! for human hopes ; as he and his daughter 
Penelope, after the theater that night, walked around to 
see the new house by starlight, what should be lighting 
up the sky with its lurid flames but the burning house of 
Silas Lapham ! " I guess I done it, Pen," was all he 
said ; and as Penelope drew her father away toward the 
nearest carriage, they caught the humorous remark: " He 
ought to have had a coat of his non-combustible paint on 
it." When he had reached home and his wife falteringly 
intimated that people would think he had set fire to the 
house to get the insurance, Lapham pathetically set her 
mind at rest by his answer : " I had a builder's risk on it, 
but it expired last week. It's a dead loss." "Oh, thank 
the merciful Lord ! " cried his wife. " Merciful ! " said 
Lapham. " Well, it's a queer way of showing it.' And 
the sleep that he sank into that night might be called a 
torpor rather than a sleep. The next morning he wished 
for a moment that he never had wakened. 

Though sorely tempted by the offer of his former part- 
ner and of English agents to take his mill property at a 
good price, — especially since it would mean his own 
financial salvation, — the Colonel sturdily held to his 
original point of view that the first condition of sale was 
to be a complete explanation of the circumstances sur- 
rounding the property — namely, that the Great Lacustrine 
& Polar Railroad, on which the mills were dependent, 
would probably want the mills, and if it did, what it was 
willing to pay would fix the ultimate value of the property. 
To come to this conclusion against the subtle wiles of 
Rogers, his old partner, required an all-night struggle with 



" The Rise of Silas Lapham '* 41 

his conscience, and even without his wife's usual help, but 
he was victorious in the end, even to his own undoing. 
And likewise, when he had an opportunity to sell an inter- 
est in his paint works at Lapham to a willing purchaser, 
he had lost his chance and all it would have meant to him 
at that crisis in his affairs by conscientiously telling of the 
existence of the competing company in West Virginia, and 
its facilities for cheaper production. 

Finally, after desperate efforts to save himself, and 
with spasmodic hopes that he would succeed, the gradual 
process of his ruin brought him to the actual consumma- 
tion of bankruptcy. And all concerned in his affairs said 
that he behaved well, — there was a return to him of his 
earlier prudence and good sense which he seemed tempo- 
rarily to have lost in his too abundant prosperity ; he 
saw the futility of further operations in Boston ; he put 
the house at Nankeen Square, with everything he had, into 
the payment of his debts ; and recognized heroically that 
back in the Vermont hills where he began was the place 
where he should have to begin again, although the going 
back was as much the end to him of his proud, prosperous 
life as death itself could have been. 

In truth, life had lost most of its buoyant quality for 
him, and even the long-hoped-for alliance with the aristo- 
cratic Coreys, through the marriage of Penelope Lapham 
with young Corey, failed to bring that sense of gratified 
social ambition which would once have been so keen a 
delight. Both the Colonel and his wife took a good deal 
of satisfaction in his clean-handedness through the whole 
process of his business collapse ; and when Mr. Sewell 
and his wife, the next summer after Lapham had sold out, 
stopped to see him on their way from the White Mountains 



42 Provincial Types in New England 

to Lake Champlain, he gave the minister his own interpre- 
tation of the workings of his life, a sort of rude doctrine 
about the inescapable influence of evil action : " Some- 
times I get to thinking it all over, and it seems to me I 
done wrong about Rogers in the first place ; that the 
whole trouble came from that. It was just like starting a 
row of bricks. I tried to catch up and stop 'em from 
going, but they all tumbled, one after another. It wa'n't 
in the nature of things that they could be stopped till the 
last brick went." 

And when the minister delicately inquired if Lapham 
ever had any regrets, the Colonel characteristically re- 
plied : " About what I done ? Well, it don't always seem 
as if I done it. Seems sometimes as if it was a hole 
opened for me, and I crept out of it. . . . I don't know 
as I should always say it paid ; but if I done it, and the 
thing was to do over again, right in the same way, I guess 
I should have to do it." 

This, at the end, is really an essential note in the con- 
vincing portrayal of a self-made Yankee type, — strong, yet 
crude ; ambitious, yet ludicrously provincial at times ; full 
of an unostentatious philanthropy and a grateful loyalty ; 
driven with energy, yet kindly and shrewdly humorous ; 
proud and boastful of its ow^n creation, yet almost grovel- 
ing at times in its effort to accomplish its social advance- 
ment ; virile and normal in its ordinary manifestations, but 
often coarsely vulgar in its pleasures, and ignorant of the 
delightful worlds of art and literary enjoyment ; and reli- 
giously conscientious in its steadfast honesty, even w^hen 
that honesty meant the cruel blasting of every hope and 
achievement. 



CHAPTER III 

"PEMBROKE" BY MARY E. WILKINS 

When the New England short story is mentioned the 
mind naturally turns to Miss Wilkins (now Mary Wilkins 
Freeman), because of her certain touch in portraying the 
various provincial types in that special form of literary art. 
But in her more sustained effort of " Pembroke " one gets 
more fully the interaction of many village types and a deeper 
impression of the prevailing grimness and rigidity of much 
of New England's remote community life, — a life that has, 
too, its pleasing contrasts, its often unconscious humor, and 
its strength of loyal love and self-sacrifice ; yet as painted 
by Miss Wilkins it is gaunt and " set," intensely and formally 
religious, and lacking much in the spirit of mirth and the 
love of beauty. As has elsewhere been said, conscience and 
will dominate these lives like passions, — they are driven 
before them like ships with bare masts before the storm. 
Life often ceases to be joy and becomes only duty, — 
duty of the most exacting and unrelenting kind ; or else 
some cruel stubbornness or inactivity of will works itself out 
almost unconsciously into a Hfelong tragedy of suffering and 
misery. 

Miss Wilkins's opening picture in " Pembroke " is that 
of the Thayer family sitting in semicircle about the kitchen 
fire, the great leather-bound Bible resting on the knees of 
Caleb Thayer, the father, who is reading from it in solemn 

43 



44 Provincial Types in New England 

voice ; while his wife, Deborah, " her large face tilted with 
a judicial and argumentative air," sits straight in her chair 
and enjoys with much relish one of the imprecatory psalms 
her husband is reading. Her eyes were gleaming with 
warlike energy, — she was confusing '' King David's enemies 
with those people who crossed her own will." As her eldest 
son, Barney, came into the kitchen on his way to make a 
Sunday-night call on his sweetheart, Ephraim, the younger 
son, stared at his brother's smooth, scented hair, the black 
satin vest with a pattern of blue flowers on it, the blue coat 
with brass buttons, and the shining boots, and softly whistled 
under his breath. 

Mrs. Thayer enjoined her son not to stay later than nine 
o'clock, and to emphasize her injunction "she jerked her 
chin down heavily as if it were made of iron." But Barnabas, 
a chip of the maternal block, slammed the door as he went 
out, and the mother remarked that if he were a few years 
younger, she would make him shut that door " over again." 
" Barney " was to be married to Charlotte Barnard in June ; 
and as he passed under the apple blossoms and looked up, 
he thought of his share of the income from apples, and how 
Charlotte after their marriage should have one new silk dress 
every year and two new bonnets, — for his mother had often 
noted with scorn that Charlotte wore her summer bonnet 
with another ribbon on it in winter. In his loving pride he 
had once bought Charlotte a little blue-figured shawl, which 
her father in the answering pride of poverty had bidden her 
return. " I ain't goin' to have any young sparks buyin' your 
clothes while you are under my roof." 

On his way to Charlotte Barnard's he stopped at the little 
story-and-a-half cottage house which he had been building 
in anticipation of his marriage. His father, in his inherited 



" Pembroke " 45 

terror of wind, had urged the safety of a one-story house, 
but Barney scornfully insisted on a story and a half. Through 
the kitchen window he could see a straight, dark column of 
smoke rising from Charlotte's home. He imagined how pleased 
she would be with the sunniness of the windows in this cozy 
room, and said to himself, " Her rocking-chair can set there." 
In the fullness of his emotion at the thought of their happi- 
ness the tears came to his eyes, and, laying his cheek against 
a partition wall of his new house, he suddenly kissed it. As 
he went out of the house, he thought of their long future 
together and the solemn end, — ''I shall he in my coffin 
in the north room, and it will be all over," — but his heart 
was leaping with joy and he felt the proud strength of a 
soldier. 

In the Barnard kitchen, after a somewhat nervous welcome 
to the lover on the part of Charlotte's mother and Aunt 
Sylvia, the sudden and gruff voice of Cephas Barnard, the 
father, bade his daughter light the candle, although it was 
hardly late enough to justify such a proceeding. But the 
grim, black-eyed Cephas suspected that the young lover 
would be likely to hold his daughter's hand in the duskr, 
and he was going to prevent it. 

Barnabas listened for the welcome crackle of the fire in 
the parlor where he hoped to sit alone with Charlotte, but 
this particular Sunday night he failed to hear it. With 
aggressive opposition Charlotte's father had sometimes pro- 
claimed, " If Barnabas Thayer can't set here with the rest 
of us, he can go home." His hard and at times almost 
savage manner was loyally interpreted by Mrs. Barnard to 
her daughter as "your father's way." As Miss Wilkins 
remarks, " Miss Barnard herself had spelt out her husband 
like a hard and seemingly cruel text in the Bible. She 



46 Provincial Types in New England 

marveled at its darkness in her light, but she believed in it 
reverently, and even pugnaciously." But her elder sister 
Hannah stood in no particular awe of her brother-in-law, 
and his autocratic whims she was quick to characterize in 
a somewhat pungent style : " His way ! Keepin' you all 
on rye meal one spell, an' not lettin' you eat a mite of 
Injun, an' then keepin' you on Injun without a mite of 
rye ! Makin' you eat nothin' but greens an' garden stuff, 
an' jest turnin' you out to graze an' chew your cuds like 
horned animals one spell, an' then makin' you live on meat ! " 

Tragically enough, on this eventful night Cephas Barnard 
and his prospective son-in-law, — the one a Whig and the 
other a Democrat, — fell into an ugly political discussion, 
which waxed uglier, until in his sudden rage the father 
ordered Barnabas from the house. " Get out of this house, 
an' don't you ever darse darken these doors again while the 
Lord Almighty reigns ! " Whereupon, in an awful voice, 
Barnabas rejoined, " I never will, by the Lord Almighty ! " 
and slammed the door behind him. That quarrel and that 
vow, in the grimly ordered village tragedy of Miss Wilkins, 
affected the life of a whole community. Given the " set " 
New England character and the idolatry of self-will, and 
some very tragic consequences may result from seemingly 
trivial causes. 

Against her father's will and even forcibly, Charlotte 
pushed out into the night calling after her lover to come 
back, but with characteristic stubbornness he never turned 
his head ; and there she stood alone, finally shouting to him 
imperiously, " If you're ever coming back, you come now ! " 
Locked out from her home by her angry father, Charlotte 
sat motionless on the door-stone till her Aunt Sylvia's appear- 
ance suggested that she spend the night with her. And as 



" Pembroke '* 47 

they went by, all unknown to them, Barnabas Thayer, the 
maddened lover, watched them from the window of his new 
house, and bewailed the hardness of his fate, which he inevi- 
tably connected with the will of God. " ' What have I done 
to be treated in this way ? ' he demanded, setting his face 
ahead in the darkness ; and he did not see Cephas Barnard's 
threatening countenance, but another, gigantic with its vague 
outlines, which his fancy could not limit, confronting him 
with terrible negative power like a stone image. He struck 
out against it, and the blows fell back on his own heart." 

Involved in the misery of Charlotte and Barnabas, is the 
sweet and lifelike " old maid," Aunt Sylvia Crane, who, de- 
tained by the quarrel of Cephas and Barnabas, had missed at 
her own home the regular Sunday-night call of Richard 
Alger, her quasi-lover for the past eighteen years. The 
previous Sunday night he had come so perilously near to 
" popping the question " that he had managed to move over 
from his chair to the haircloth sofa on which she expectantly 
sat ; he had actually begun a sort of declaration of love when 
the clock struck ten and startled him into a sense of the late- 
ness of the hour, putting a sudden end to his long-delayed 
and long-hoped-for proposal. And so through the following 
week Sylvia Crane had trembled and sighed and yearned for 
the next Sunday night, when, perhaps, Richard would end 
his long wooing and add the crown of happiness to her 
patient life. But alas ! when he did actually come he found 
the stone which the Crane family from time immemorial 
had rolled before the front door in their absence blocking 
the way, and he abruptly returned to his home. That night, 
while her niece, Charlotte Barnard, lay sobbing upstairs and 
muttering to herself, " Poor Barney ! Poor Barney ! " her 
Aunt Sylvia, below, kept repeating piteously : " Poor Rich- 



48 Provincial Types in New England 

ard ! Poor Richard ! " And the next morning, after a long 
night of restless grief, the old maid felt that the disappoint- 
ment of her niece was as nothing in comparison with the 
sorrow of her own maturity. " I guess she ain't had any 
such night as I have. Girls don't know much about it." 
The hopelessness of her sorrow took the surprising form of 
petulance and hostile criticism, and the naturally sweet- 
tempered woman even dared to strike at the willful eccentric- 
ities of her brother-in-law. She maintained with remarkable 
audacity that Barney was no more " set " than Cephas ; and 
when her sister defended her husband, with the remark, 
" Cephas ain't set. It's jest his way," Sylvia grew strangely 
ironical : " Folks had better been created without ways, 
then. . . . They'd been enough sight happier an' better 
off, and so would other folks that they have to do with, than 
to have so many ways, an' not sense enough to manage 
them." Sylvia even went so far in her sudden reaction 
against fate as to inveigh against the doctrine of free will, 
which naturally had a horrifying effect on her other sister, the 
strong-willed, churchly, and dominating Hannah Berry. 
'' Sylvy Crane, you ain't goin' to deny one of the doctrines 
of the Church, at your time of life?" And being bravely 
answered by Sylvia in the affirmative, Mrs. Berry exclaimed : 
" Then all I've got to say is you'd ought to be ashamed of 
yourself. Why, I should think you was crazy, Sylvy Crane, 
settin' up yourself agin' the doctrines of the Word." 

The garrulous and outspoken Hannah was not lacking 
either in criticism of her brother-in-law ; but his wife Sarah 
came to his defense, recalHng his morning's talk on food. 
" He said this mornin' that he didn't know but we were 
eatin' the wrong kind of food. Lately he's had an idea that 
raebbe we'd ought to eat more meat ; he's thought it was 



" Pembroke '* 49 

more strengthenin', an' we'd ought to eat things as near hke 
what we wanted to strengthen as could be. I've made a 
good deal of bone soup. But now he says he thinks mebbe 
he's been mistaken, an' animal food kind of quickens the 
animal nature in us, an' that we'd better eat green things 
an' garden sass." To which the sarcastic Hannah, with a 
sniff, retorted : " I guess garden sass will strengthen the 
other kind of sass that Cephas Barnard has got in him, full 
as much as bone soup has." When later Cephas came over 
and marched back, with his wife and daughter following 
close behind, Hannah Berry's parting comment was : " Well, 
all I've got to say is I'm thankful I ain't got a man like that, 
an' you ought to be mighty thankful you ain't got any man 
at all, Sylvy Crane." But poor Sylvia could hardly agree. 

When, at home, Charlotte had put off her purple gown, 
which was to have been a part of the wedding wardrobe, 
and clad in a common dress, descended to the kitchen, she 
found her mother facing her father with unwonted spirit. 
She was remonstrating with him for his latest whim, — he 
had turned vegetarian with such a vengeance that he was in- 
sisting on sorrel pies, and he wanted them made without lard. 
His wife argued the impossibility of such cookery, although 
she made the confession that " Mebbe the sorrel, if it had 
some molasses on it for juice, wouldn't taste very bad." 
When both wife and daughter leagued against him in the 
matter of such pastry, Cephas came out of the pantry carry- 
ing the mixing-board and rolHng-pin "like a shield and a 
club," and set to work himself with characteristic stubborn- 
ness. His wife softly intimated that she had some pumpkin 
that would make good pies, but the perverse vegetarian said 
he knew that pumpkin pies had milk in them, " An' I tell 
you I ain't goin' to have anything of an animal nature in 

E 



50 Provincial Types in New England 

'em." To his wife's observation that she had seen horses 
*' terribly ugly, an' they don't eat a mite of meat," Cephas 
crushingly replied : " Ain't I told ye once horses were the 
exceptions. There has to be exceptions. If there wa'n't 
any exceptions there couldn't be any rule, an' there bein' 
exceptions shows there is a rule. Women can't ever get 
hold of things straight. Their minds slant off sideways, the 
way their arms do when they fling a stone." 

In the midst of his pie- making that she-Puritan, Deborah 
Thayer, abruptly entered. " She moved, a stately, high- 
hipped figure, her severe face almost concealed in a scoop- 
ing, green, barege hood, to the center of the floor, and stood 
there with a pose that might have answered for a statue of 
Judgment." She came to see what her son Barnabas, the 
night before, had done that Cephas Barnard should order 
him from the house forever. " If it's anything wrong, I 
shall be jest as hard on him as the Lord for it." Charlotte's 
exclamation that Barney had done nothing wrong was simply 
ignored by his mother, who fiercely assailed Cephas for the 
reason. Cephas, grimly silent, at last opened his mouth as 
if perforce, declaring that they " got to talkin' about the 
'lection," and that, according to his own reasoning, what 
they ate had a good deal to do with it. " I think if you'd 
kept your family on less meat, and given 'em more garden- 
stuff to eat, Barney wouldn't have been so up an' comin'. 
It's what he's eat that's made him what he is." This was 
too much for the logical theories of Deborah Thayer, and 
she gazed at Cephas in stern amazement. *' You're tryin' to 
make out, as near as I can tell, that whatever m} son has done 
wrong is due to what he's eat, and not to original sin. I 
knew you had queer ideas, Cephas Barnard, but I didn't 
know you wa'n't sound in your faith." 



" Pembroke " 51 

Suddenly Charlotte leaped up in fierce resentment against 
the injustice of her father, and in loyal defense of her lover, 
laying the blame for the quarrel largely on the former. And 
as Deborah Thayer retired, after discovering the sorrel pies, 
she remarked, with fierce conscientiousness : " I'm goin' to 
try to make my son do his duty. I don't expect he will, 
but I shall do all I can, tempers or no tempers, and sorrel 
pies or no sorrel pies." 

Mrs. Thayer's daughter Rebecca, in company with Rose 
Berry, her cousin, — after the latter's somewhat self-inter- 
ested effort to reconcile Barney and Charlotte, — makes a 
charming picture in Silas Berry's great country store, as she 
stands waiting to sell her basket of eggs, her face blooming 
" deeply pink in the green tunnel of her sunbonnet," her 
black eyes as '' soft and wary as a baby's," her full red lips 
wearing a grave, innocent expression. She is standing be- 
fore her lover, Silas Berry's son WilHam, who is ardently 
eager to give her a generous allowance of sugar for her eggs, 
if only he can escape the watchful supervision of his penuri- 
ous father in the rear of the store. The old man's hard 
voice sounds out, " You ain't offerin' of her two pound of 
sugar for two dozen eggs? " And when the son replies that 
it was two and a half pounds, Silas excitedly cries out, " Be 
you gone crazy?" Despite his daughter's petition and his 
son's resolute determination to give the modest Rebecca a 
full exchange, old Silas pulled himself up " a joint at a time," 
came forward at a stiff halt, and said : " Sugar is fourteen 
cents a pound, an' eggs is fetchin' ten cents a dozen ; you 
can have a pound and a half of sugar for them eggs if you 
can give me a cent to boot." Poor Rebecca colored, and 
replied that she hadn't brought her purse, whereupon the 
old man enjoined her to tell her mother about it and come 



52 Provincial Types in New England 

back with the cent by and by. But this mean bargaining 
was too much for the young lover, WiUiam, who shouldered 
his father to one side with sudden energy, sternly whispering 
to him to " leave it alone." However, the old man's 
chronic " closeness " reasserted itself in the expostulating 
remark : " I ain't goin' to stan' by an' see you givin' twice 
as much for eggs as they're worth, 'cause it's a gal you're 
tradin' with. That wa'n't never my way of doin' business, 
an' I ain't goin' to have it done in my store." William, 
with steady resolution, recklessly heaped the sugar on some 
paper, and laid it on the steelyards ; the old man pushed 
forward and bent over the steelyards, wrathfuUy exclaiming, 
" You've weighed out nigh three." Suddenly something in 
the son's face made the old man stop, — the combination of 
mental and superior physical force in the son dominated the 
father. " His son towered over him in what seemed the 
might of his own lost strength and youth, brandishing his 
own old weapons." Yet nature reasserted itself, for when 
William had put the sugar in Rebecca's basket, the old man 
began counting the eggs, only to find that " there ain't but 
twenty- three eggs here." Under the fierce whisperings of 
William, however, Silas finally subsided into sullen mut- 
terings. 

Rebecca's arrival at home found her mother, Deborah 
Thayer, vigorously making cake, looking as " full of stern 
desperation as a soldier on the battlefield. Deborah never 
yielded to any of the vicissitudes of life ; she met them in 
fair fight like enemies, and vanquished them, not with trum- 
pet and spear, but with daily duties. It was a village story 
hoVi^ Deborah Thayer " cleaned all the windows in the house 
one afternoon when her first child had died in the morning." 
She was now making cake in the midst of her bitter misery 



" Pembroke " 53 

over her son's quarrel with Cephas Barnard and his sweetheart 
Charlotte. She insisted on Rebecca's staying in the kitchen 
to cream the butter and sugar, and she already had her younger 
and somewhat invaHd son, Ephraim, stoning raisins. Though 
forbidden to eat any, Ephraim would fill his mouth when his 
mother turned away to watch Barney, the older son, at work 
in the field. Ephraim's mouth was "demure with mischief," 
and his " gawky figure perpetually uneasy and twisting, as if 
to find entrance into small forbidden places." When his 
mother looked suddenly at him there was a curious expres- 
sion in his face that continually led his mother to infer that 
he had been transgressing, and she would cry out sharply, 
" What have you been doin', Ephraim ? " but she was always 
routed by Ephraim's " innocent, wondering grin in response." 
At the end of his raisin-stoning he plaintively asked, '*'Can't 
I have just one raisin, mother?" "Yes, you may, if you 
ain't eat any while you was pickin' of 'em over." Where- 
upon little innocent Ephraim selected a large fat " plum," 
and ate it with " ostentatious relish." 

As his mother turned to go out, Ephraim whiningly asked 
if he couldn't go too. " There were times when the spirit 
of rebeUion in him made illness and even his final demise 
flash before his eyes like sweet overhanging fruit, since they 
were so strenuously forbidden." Meeting her son Barnabas, 
who was plowing in the field, Deborah issued her ultima- 
tum, and their first silent glances were as if " two wills clashed 
swords in advance." " I ain't never goin' to say anything 
more to you about it," referring to the proposed apology to 
Cephas Barnard, " but there's one thing — you needn't come 
home to dinner. You sha'n't ever sit down to a meal in your 
father's and mother's house whilst this thing goes on." And 
the only response that came from the " set " Barnabas was 



54 Provincial Types in New England 

" G'lang ! " Caleb, the father, also pleaded with the son, 
but without the least effect ; and as he sat sobbing under the 
wild cherry tree, — his face in his old red handkerchief, — 
Rebecca, coming out to feed the hens, attempted to console 
him with the remark, " Barney'll get over it." To which 
Caleb despairingly responded : ^' No, he won't ; no, he 
won't. He's jest like your mother." 

One of the delightful and relieving pictures in " Pembroke " 
is that of the cherry party in Silas Berry's orchard — where 
the young people of the village were in the habit of picnick- 
ing, until old Silas's greed overreached itself and some college 
friends of 'Squire Payne's son, refusing to pay the exorbitant 
price, went by singing " Who lives here ? " with the mocking 
response, " Old Silas Berry, who charges sixpence for a 
cherry." The comment of his wife on the impolicy of his 
greed, — "You're jest a-puttin' your own eyes out, Silas 
Berry," — proved too true a prophecy, for his orchard was 
regularly boycotted by the young people and purchasers gen- 
erally. This season, however, the old man seemed afflicted 
with spasmodic generosity, — he had even offered Rose, his 
daughter, the privilege of a cherry party without pay ; whereat 
Rose fairly gasped. " The vague horror of the unusual stole 
over her. A new phase of her father's character stood be- 
tween her and all her old memories like a supernatural pres- 
ence." As she said to her mother, she was dreadfully afraid 
he was going to have another "shock." 

In making the plans for the party Rose and her mother 
decided to include all the available young people, — " The 
Lord only knows when your father'U have another freak like 
this. I guess it's like an eclipse of the sun, and won't come 
again very soon." And there was Charlotte Barnard, her 
" smooth hair gleaming in the sun, her neck showing pink 



Pembroke " 



55 



through her embroidered lace kerchief," apparently not see- 
ing her old lover, Barnabas, but knowing full well when he 
came ; and Barney, in his best suit, slender and handsome, 
with a stern and almost martial air, standing apart, and feel- 
ing a fierce sense of ownership in Charlotte, whose basket 
the 'Squire's son Thomas was filling with the ripest cherries 
from the top of the tree. But Barney yielded to the charm 
of Rose Berry's frank and winning ways, — of Rose, who, in 
the heart of her New England, and bred after the precepts 
of orthodoxy, was yet a pagan, and "worshiped Love 
himself." " Barney was simply the statue that represented 
the divinity ; another might have done as well had the sculp- 
ture been as fine." 

" Copenhagen " was the favorite game that afternoon 
under the cherry trees ; and as the young people clung to 
the swaying rope, looping this way and that as the pursuers 
neared them, their radiant faces " had the likeness of one 
family of flowers, through their one expression." The 
tossing cherry boughs above their heads, the old red tavern 
wall with a great mass of blooming phlox against it, " vague 
with distance like a purple smoke," the glistening fence 
rails, a singing bluebird, — these were all unthought of by 
the merrymakers, and only one note, the note of joyous 
love, they listened to; even Charlotte and Barney felt 
the old touch of love's exhilaration, except that it was Rose 
and not Charlotte that Barney kissed so fiercely, for at 
that very moment the handsome face of Thomas Payne, his 
rival, was meeting Charlotte's. " The girls' cheeks flushed 
deeper, their smooth locks became roughened. The laughter 
waxed louder and longer ; the matrons looking on doubled 
their broad backs with responsive merriment. It became 
like a little bacchanalian rout in a New England field on a 



^6 Provincial Types in New England 

summer afternoon, but they did not know it in their simple 
hearts." 

But on this free-hearted merriment scowled the avaricious 
face of the owner of the cherry trees, Silas Berry, whose 
predominant trait seemed to " mold his face to itself 
unchangeably, as the face of a hunting dog is molded to 
his speed and watchfulness." As the happy party were 
passing homeward they had confirmed with a chorus of 
assents the remark of Thomas Payne that he guessed the 
old man wasn't so bad after all, when suddenly Silas himself 
advanced toward them, drew out a roll of paper, and handed 
it to Thomas Payne. At Thomas's inquiry as to what it 
was, the old man's face lighted up with the ingenuous smile 
of a child, and he replied in a wheedling whisper, " It's 
nothin' but the bill ... for the cherries you eat. I've 
always been in the habit of chargin' more, but I've took off 
a leetle this time." Thomas in disgusted surprise crammed 
the amount of the bill into the eagerly outstretched hand 
of the old man, but before the party had reached the foot 
of the hill the running feet of William Berry, the old man's 
son, were heard, and a hoarse voice called out to Thomas 
Payne to stop. William sternly demanded the amount the 
latter had paid his father for the cherries, and paid it back 
with trembhng fingers, remarking as he did so, '"'Take it, 
for God's sake ! " 

Despite their efforts to ease his chagrin over his father's 
unparalleled meanness, William Berry broke from them 
and " pelted up the hill with his heart so bitterly sore that 
it seemed as if he trod on it at every step." But a voice 
kept crying after him, there was " a soft flutter of girlish 
skirts," and presently the hand of Rebecca Thayer touched 
his arm. It was the touch of love and sympathy, and 



" Pembroke " 57 

William blushed. " Don't you feel bad ; don't you feel bad. 
You aren't to blame." — '* Isn't he my father?" — "You aren't 
to blame for that." — " Disgrace comes without blame," said 
William bitterly as he moved on. But protesting her desire 
to be with him and to sympathize with him, Rebecca raised 
both her arms and put them about his neck. " He leaned 
his cheek down against her soft hair. ' Poor William,' she 
whispered, as if he had been her child instead of her lover." 
Yet such spontaneous and heroic love in the presence of 
disgrace and public ridicule was destined to melt the con- 
ventional bonds of virtue and bring upon itself the nemesis 
of social and family ostracism. 

Rebecca's mother, Deborah, on her daughter's return 
home, cross-examined her as to her lateness, and discover- 
ing something of the real situation with reference to William 
Berry, pitilessly ordered Rebecca to give up all thought of 
marriage with him, threatening, in fact, to disown her if she 
married against her parents' wishes : " I shan't have any 
child but Ephraim left, that's all ! " 

Ephraim, the professional boy invalid, whiningly pleaded 
with his mother to know what Rebecca had done, but he 
was suddenly sent to the pump to wash his face and hands ; 
and as soon as he had filled himself with milk toast and 
been denied a piece of pie, he was sent from the table to 
begin his nightly study of the catechism. Muttering angrily 
under his breath, Ephraim got the catechism out of the top 
drawer of his father's desk and began " droning out in his 
weak, sulky voice the first question therein, ' What is the 
chief end of man ? ' " He had been nightly drilled for the 
last five years on the " Assembly's Catechism," when his 
general health admitted — "and sometimes, it seemed to 
Ephraim, when it had not admitted." In fact, his mother. 



58 Provincial Types in New England 

fearing a sudden death for her youngest son, was striving 
to fit him for a higher state to which he might soon be 
called. And so, before the " Catechism," Ephraim had 
been driven laboriously through the whole Bible, chapter by 
chapter. His mother was pitiless in this regard, and with 
stern pathos she would say to his protesting and sympathetic 
father : " If he can't learn nothin' about books, he's got to 
learn about his own soul. He's got to, whether it hurts 
him or not." 

The iron insistence of Deborah Thayer that her daughter 
Rebecca should not marry William Berry, the young man 
of her choice, had resulted in the daughter's illustrating her 
mother's own obstinacy and in Rebecca's going secretly 
with William until she had come to love him not wisely but 
too well. The unfortunate result had become the talk of 
the Httle community, — especially of the gossipmongers, — 
but as yet it had not been revealed to the iron-willed mother. 
She had indeed noticed a peculiar change in Rebecca, — 
an expression in her face that was foreign to it, a growing 
antipathy to society, and a certain air of misery that was 
inexplicable even to the penetrating eyes of Deborah 
Thayer. She began to relent toward her daughter, to 
watch over her with a sort of fierce tenderness. " She 
brewed great bowls of domestic medicines from nuts and 
herbs, and made her drink whether she would or not. She 
sent her to bed early, and debarred her from the night air." 
But not a shadow of suspicion ever crossed her mind that 
night after night that same daughter slipped across the 
north parlor and out the front door into the darkness to 
meet her forbidden lover. The mother, in fact, was 
secretly dreaming high dreams for her daughter's matrimonial 
future ; and late at night, after Rebecca had gone to bed 



" Pembroke " 59 

in her little room off the north parlor, the sternly ambitious 
mother knitted yard after yard of lace that should properly 
furnish forth her daughter as a bride. She even drove 
alone on a windy and snowy December day to a neighboring 
village to buy material for a new dress for Rebecca. It 
was snowing hard as she returned, and her green veil was 
white as she entered the kitchen. *' I kept the dress under 
the buffalo-robe, an' that ain't hurt any," she vigorously 
remarked ; but when, after proudly shaking out the folds 
of the gleaming crimson thibet, she got no answering enthu- 
siasm from her daughter, she cried out sharply, " You don't 
deserve to have a new dress ; you act Hke a stick of wood." 
The next morning Deborah worked assiduously at cutting 
and making the new dress for Rebecca, and about the mid- 
dle of the forenoon she was ready to try it on. She made 
Rebecca stand up in the middle of the kitchen floor and 
began fitting the crimson gown to her ; when, suddenly rec- 
ognizing something significant in Rebecca's heavily drooping 
form, she gave a great start, pushed her daughter violently 
from her, and stood aloof, looking at her, while the clock 
ticked in the dreadful silence. " Look at me," said Deb- 
orah. " And Rebecca looked ; it was like uncovering a 
disfigurement or a sore." The truth of premature passion 
was out, and Rebecca's eyes and soul shrank from her mother 
as the latter cried, " Go out of this house." And Rebecca 
obeyed without a sound. Immediately after dinner Deb- 
orah plodded through the snow to her son Barney's, and in 
a strange voice bade him go after William Berry and make 
him marry Rebecca. And when the startled Barney inquired 
Rebecca's whereabouts, his mother harshly retorted : " I 
don't know where she is. I turned her out because I 
wouldn't have her in the house. You brought it all on us ; 



6o Provincial Types in New England 

if you hadn't acted so I shouldn't have felt as I did about 
her marryin'. Now you can go and find her, and get Wil- 
liam Berry an' make him marry her. I ain't got anything 
more to do with it." 

When this marriage by compulsion was accomplished and 
Rebecca was estabhshed in the old Bennett house as Mrs. 
WilHam Berry, she lived with curtains down and doors bolted. 
Never a neighbor saw her face at door or window, and she 
would not go to the door if anybody knocked. Even to her 
own brother Barney she was not at home, though he begged 
to be admitted, and declared he didn't want to say anything 
hard. And WilHam himself was scarcely noticed by his own 
father and mother, — such was the unforgiving hardness of 
their sense of disgrace and their " righteous " wrath ; and as 
for his mother's going to see her son's wife, " Hannah Berry 
would have set herself up in a pillory " sooner than do that. 
As for Rebecca's mother, Deborah Thayer, she never spoke 
of her daughter ; and when Rebecca's little dead child went 
by in the hearse, Deborah would not attend the funeral, 
though Rebecca's poor old father did. 

Since Rebecca's forced marriage Ephraim, her sickly 
younger brother, had had a sterner experience than ever 
with his mother, Deborah, who with her strenuous Puritan 
soul was bent on fitting her invalid boy for heaven. Since 
all her vigorous training had failed in the case of his sister, 
the mother redoubled her spiritual discipline over her last 
child until his life became an almost intolerable series of 
restraints and duties. On account of his chronic illness he 
was shut up to a very scanty and simple diet, — no cake, no 
pie, no plum from a pie ; and he now had daily a double 
stint in the catechism. One brilliant moonlight night, feel- 
ing a little better as he lay propped up with pillows in his 



"Pembroke" 6i 

bedroom, and feeling also the irrepressible boy in him, 
Ephraim stole out of the house, when his father and mother 
were safely asleep, took his brother's sled, and coasted alone 
till midnight, having the one playtime of his life. " He ig- 
nored his feeble and laboring breath of life. He trod upon, 
he outspeeded, all infirmities of the flesh in his wild triumph 
of the spirit." His shouts and halloos rang out as he shot 
down the hill ; and when he got home and was ready for 
bed once more this invalid boy bethought him of the forbid- 
den mince pie in the pantry. He slid as " noiseless as a 
shadow in the moonlight " through the kitchen, past his par- 
ents' door, climbed a " meal-bucket," reached his pie, broke 
out a "great jagged half," and back on the edge of his bed 
devoured his juicy feast. He had had his first good time. 
The next morning he was actually ill, but kept it from his 
mother. As she went out to drive to a neighboring town 
for sugar and tea, which she refused to buy of her son-in-law, 
she left word with Ephraim to tell his father to finish paring 
the apples so that she could make them into " sauce " on her 
return. He promised, but when his mother got out of sight 
he forgot his promise and played " holly-gull " with his father. 
When his mother discovered on her return that Ephraim had 
ignored her order she went out to the shed. Meanwhile the 
boy, now actually very ill, seemed to have lost all fear of 
her ; lie felt very strange and " as if he were sinking away 
from it all through deep abysses." Deborah returned with 
a stout stick, and, against the protests of her husband, led 
the way to Ephraim's bedroom. The boy staggered as he 
went, and she saw how ill he looked ; but she could not this 
time be daunted by that from her high spiritual purpose. 
" Ephraim," said his mother, " I have spared the rod with 
you all my life because you were sick. Your brother and 



62 Provincial Types in New England 

your sister have both rebelled against the Lord and against 
me. You are all the child I've got left. You've got to mind 
me and do right. I ain't goin' to spare you any longer be- 
cause you ain't well. It is better you should be sick than 
be well and wicked and disobedient. It is better that your 
body should suffer than your immortal soul. Stand still." 
And with that the stick descended, the boy made a strange 
noise, and then sank in a heap upon the floor. All of Deb- 
orah Thayer's mustard and hot water, all of her remorseful 
agony of prayer, had no effect to stir once more the life in 
poor little Ephraim's body. Indeed, she prayed all night 
for justification, and the watchers over. Ephraim's dead body 
looked at each other with shocked significance. When later 
it became known to Deborah Thayer, through the kind 
offices of the doctor's wife, that her boy had indulged, the 
night before his death, in hours of coasting and in mince-pie 
eating, her agonized mind was somewhat relieved ; but the 
recent tragedy of her life and the sudden shock of relief 
proved too much for this fiercely torn soul, driven by the 
nemesis of Puritan conscience and her own implacable will, 
and she sank out of life as suddenly as the son whom she 
had punished for his eternal good. 

With patient sweetness amid a secret poverty that finally 
brought her " on the town," Sylvia Crane had waited twenty 
years for Richard Alger, her regular Sunday-night wooer; 
and finally, the morning following the wedding of her niece. 
Rose Berry, Sylvia, with a bundle of bedding, a chest, and a 
rocking-chair, had started on a wood-sled for the poorhouse. 
But, strange to say, as they passed Richard Alger's home, 
he appeared as a rescuer, compelled the old man to drive 
back to the Crane house, and there made a contrite confes- 
sion to Sylvia, who in all her own poverty and blasted hope 



" Pembroke " 63 

kept a heart of sympathy and pity open for Richard. " I've 
been meaner than sin," said Richard, " an' I don't know as 
it makes it any better because I couldn't seem to help it. I 
didn't forget you a single minute, Sylvia, an' I was awful sorry 
for you, an' there wasn't a Sabbath night that I didn't want 
to come more than I wanted to go to heaven. But I couldn't. 
I couldn't nohow. I've always had to travel in tracks, an' 
no man livin' knows how deep a track he's in till he gets 
jolted out of it an' can't get back. But I've got into a 
track now, an' I'll die before I get out of it." And Sylvia's 
face flushed " like an old flower revived in a new spring." 
He married her one Sunday morning at the minister's, and 
then together they went to "meetin'," — although Sylvia's 
sister, Hannah Berry, was for having a public wedding, caus- 
tically observing : ^' If I'd been goin' with a feller as long as 
you have with him, I wouldn't get cheated out of a weddin', 
anyhow. I'd have a weddin', an' I'd have cake, an' I'd ask 
folks, especially after what's happened. I'd let 'em see I wa'n't 
quite so far gone, if I had set out for the poorhouse once." 

And ten years after his quarrel with Charlotte Barnard 
and her father, Barney Thayer, — heroically nursed in the 
face of public opinion by the loyal Charlotte, — finally was 
able to conquer his constitutional " setness," as Richard 
Alger had done ; and resolutely getting up from his sick bed 
he marched laboriously up the hill to the Barnard house to 
announce to his old and never wavering sweetheart that he 
had at last " come back." 

By such unrelenting characterization as this has the author 
set forth in " Pembroke " the story of a New England com- 
munity whose grim rigidity of life would be incredible were 
it not confirmed by the strong and subtle art of so realistic 
a writer as Miss Wilkins. 



CHAPTER IV 

"DEEPHAVEN" BY SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

Just before his death James Russell Lowell wrote to Miss 
Jewett's publishers in London : " I am very glad to hear that 
Miss Jewett's delightful stories are to be reprinted in Eng- 
land. Nothing more pleasingly characteristic of rural life 
in New England has been written, and they have long been 
valued by the judicious here." And the world of "judicious " 
American readers still agrees with this discriminating judg- 
ment. The daughter of " A Country Doctor," Miss Jewett 
had all the advantages, as a girl, of going about the country 
with her father on his visits to inland farms or along the 
seacoa^t ; and " when the time came that my own world of 
imagination was more real to me than any other, I was some- 
times perplexed at my father's directing my attention to cer- 
tain points of interest in the characters or surroundings of 
our acquaintances. I cannot help believing that he recog- 
nized, long before I did myself, in what direction the current 
of purpose in my life was setting. Now as I write my 
sketches of country life, I remember again and again the 
wise things he said, and the sights he made me see." 

Such peculiar preparation for portraying in permanent 
literary form the characteristics of certain provincial types in 
New England Hfe bore fruit in " Deephaven," her first literary 
and artistic success. The fact, too, that her early life was 

64 



" Deephaven " 65 

spent in the old Maine settlement of Berwick, with its once 
flourishing shipping trade, its sailors and " sea-tanned cap- 
tains," and that her own grandfather had been a sea-cap- 
tain, gave to the writing of such a collection of sketches as 
" Deephaven " an authoritative and natural touch that 
constitutes much of their charm and value. To all these 
favorable conditions must be added the possession by Miss 
Jevvett of a hterary art that is almost classic in its clearness 
and grace, its vital sympathy, and its unaffected sincerity. 
If, as she herself says, "the distinction of modern literature 
is the evocation of sympathy," and if, as Plato said, the best 
thing that can be done for the people of a state is to make 
them acquainted with one another. Miss Jewett's literary 
purpose has been very happily accomplished. 

The summer that Kate Lancaster spent at the old Bran- 
don house in Deephaven, in company with her friend who 
recounts the narrative, was indeed a summer of unique 
charm and delight — for Deephaven was a quaint old place 
with high rocks and woods and hills, and Brandon house 
is suggestive of that fine old home in Berwick, Maine, built 
in 1750, where Miss Jevvett herself was born. Twelve miles 
from Deephaven the two girls left the railway and took 
passage in a stage-coach, with only one passenger besides 
themselves, who was a very large, thin, weather-beaten 
woman that looked tired, lonesome, and good-natured. 
She was delighted to respond to the remark that it was 
very dusty, with another remark to the efl"ect that she 
should think everybody was sweeping, and that she always 
felt, after being in the cars awhile, as if she " had been 
taken all to pieces and left in the different places." This 
genial and talkative fellow-passenger, Mrs. Kew, proved to 
be the wife of the keeper of the Deephaven light, and she 



66 Provincial Types in New England 

and her husband were destined to give the two young ladies 
some very unusual diversions during the summer. 

Upon the hiquiry as to whether Mrs. Kew knew the 
Brandon house in Deephaven, the genial soul replied that 
she knew it as well as the meeting-house. "• * He ' wrote me 
some o' Mrs. Lancaster's folks were going to take the 
Brandon house this summer, an' so you are the ones? 
It's a sightly old place ; I used to go and see Miss Kath- 
arine. She must have left a power of chinaware." Mrs. 
Kew also told how she herself would always be " a real up- 
country woman " if she lived there a hundred years. " The 
sea doesn't come natural to me, it kind of worries me, 
though you won't find a happier woman than I be, 'long 
shore." 

As the stage drove up to the old Brandon " place," the 
young ladies noted with satisfaction the row of poplars in 
front of the great white house, the tall Hlacs, the crowds of 
rose bushes still in bloom, the box borders, and the great 
elms at the side of the house and down the road. And the 
hall door stood wide open. Within, it was a home of great 
possibiUties, — four large rooms on the lower floor, and six 
above, a wide hall in each story, and a " fascinating garret " 
over the whole, where were many mysterious old chests and 
boxes, in one of which the girls found the love-letters of 
Kate's grandmother. The rooms all had elaborate cornices, 
and the lower hall was very fine, with an archway dividing 
it, and all kinds of panelings, and a great door at either 
end. But " the best chamber " rather inspired dread. It 
had a huge curtained bed, and the paper on the walls had 
been captured in a French prize some time in the last cen- 
tury, — the color of it being an " unearthly pink and a for- 
bidding maroon, with dim white spots, which gave it the 



" Deephaven '* 67 

appearance of having molded." The great lounge made 
the girls low-spirited, after hearing that Miss Brandon her- 
self didn't like it, because she had seen so many of her rela- 
tives He there dead. There were fantastic china ornaments 
from Bible subjects on the mantel, and the only picture was 
one of the Maid of Orleans, tied with an " unnecessarily strong 
rope to a very stout stake." The west parlor downstairs 
proved to be the girls' favorite room, with its great fireplace 
framed in blue and white Dutch tiles which represented 
graphically the careers of the good and the bad man. The 
last two of the series were of very high art, — a great coffin 
stood in the foreground of each, and the virtuous man was 
being led off by "• two disagreeable-looking angels," while 
the wicked one was hastening from an " indescribable but 
unpleasant assemblage of claws and horns and eyes which is 
rapidly advancing from the distance, open-mouthed, and 
bringing a chain with4t." 

In their visits to Mrs. Kew and the lighthouse Kate and 
her friend were particularly interested in a row of marks on 
the back of the wide " fore door," where Mrs. Kew had 
tried to keep account one summer of the number of people 
who innocently inquired about the depredations of the 
neighbors' chickens ; and they were also specially interested 
in Mrs. Kew's collection of '' relations " in the form of pho- 
tographs, and in her critical remarks about special features 
in the faces. " That's my oldest brother's wife, Clorinthy 
Adams that was. She's well-featured, if it were not for her 
nose, and that looks as if it had been thrown at her, and she 
wasn't particular about having it on firm, in hopes of getting 
a better one. She sets by her looks though." 

Among the first of Deephaven callers on the two girls 
from Boston was a prim little old woman by the name of 



68 Provincial Types in New England 

Mrs. Patton. She wore a neat cap and " front," but no 
bonnet, and had over her shoulders a little three-cornered 
shawl. She was very short and straight and thin, and 
" darted like a pickerel " when she moved about. She im- 
pressed Kate's friend as an undoubtedly capable person with 
" faculty." When Kate remarked that she had been inquir- 
ing whether Mrs. Patton was still in Deephaven, the prim 
little woman excitedly exclaimed : " Land o' compassion ! 
Where'd ye s'pose I'd be, dear? I ain't like to move away 
from Deephaven now, after Pv.e held by the place so long 
Pve got as many roots as the big ellum." 

The care-taking Mrs. Patton hoped that Kate and her 
friend had found the house in " middling order," for " me 
and Mis' Dockum have done the best we knew, — opened 
the windows and let in the air and tried to keep it from get- 
ting damp. I fixed all the woolens with fresh camphire and 
tobacco the last o' the winter ; you have to be dreadful care- 
ful in one o' these old houses, less every thing gets creaking 
with moths in no time. ... I set a trap there, but it was 
older'n the ten commandments, that trap was, and the 
spring's rusty. ... I see your aunt's cat setting out on the 
front steps. She never was no great of a mouser, but it went 
to my heart to see how pleased she looks ! Come right 
back, didn't she?" She continued in a reminiscent strain 
of pleased garrulity, recalling the funeral of Kate's aunt, 
Miss Brandon, and pronouncing this unqualified eulogy : 
"She was a good Christian woman. Miss Katherine was. 
'The memory of the just is blessed'; that's what Mr. 
Lorimer said in his sermon the Sunday after she died, and 
there wasn't a blood relation there to hear it." So spoke 
in grateful stream the " Widow Jim " (to distinguish her from 
the widow of Jack Patton), who was a distinctly useful per- 



" Deephaven " 69 

sonage in the community of Deephaven. She made elab- 
orate rugs and carpets, she *' cleaned house " at the Carews' 
and Lorimers', she had no equal in sickness and could brew 
every old-fashioned dose and every variety of herb tea, and 
she often served her patient after death by being commander- 
in-chief at her funeral, — even to the making out of the 
order of the procession,, since she had all the local genealogy 
and relationship at her tongue's end. In fact, a mistake in 
precedence at a funeral was counted an awful thing in Deep- 
haven ; and the young ladies once chanced to hear some 
bitter remarks because the cousins of the departed wife had 
been placed after the husband's relatives, — "the blood 
relations ridin' behind them that was only kin by marriage ! " 
The good opinion in which Mrs. Patton was held in the 
community was generously reflected by Mrs. Dockum, as 
the young ladies were returning from the post-office after 
their call on the Widow Jim. " Willin' woman," said Mrs. 
Dockum, " always been respected ; got an uncommon 
facility o' speech. . . . Dreadful tough time of it with 
her husband, shif'less and drunk all his time," continued 
Mrs. Dockum, in the pleasure of painful reminiscence. 
" Noticed that dent in the side of her forehead, I s'pose? 
That's where he liked to have killed her ; slung a stone 
bottle at her." At the exclamation of shocked interest on 
the part of the young ladies, Mrs. Dockum considerately 
went into details : " She don't like to have it inquired about ; 
but she and I were sitting up with 'Manda Damer one night, 
and she gave me the particulars. . . . Had sliced cucum- 
bers for breakfast that morning ; he was very partial to them, 
and he wanted some vinegar. Happened to be two bottles 
in the cellar-way ; were just alike, and one of 'em was 
vinegar and the other had spenit in it at haying-time. He 



yo Provincial Types in New England 

takes up the wrong one and pours on quick, and out come 
the hayseed and flies, and he give the bottle a sling and it 
hit her there where you see the scar ; might put the end of 
your finger into the dent. He said he meant to break 
the bottle ag'in the door, but it went slantwise, sort of. . . . 
He died in debt ; drank like a fish." And then Mrs. 
Dockum rounded her story with a- concise eulogy of the 
widow : " Yes, 'twas a shame, nice woman ; good consistent 
church member ; always been respected ; useful among the 
sick." 

Among the most interesting types in Deephaven society 
were the ancient mariners who sunned themselves like 
turtles every pleasant summer morning on the wharves. 
They were known by etiquette as " captains," though the 
author is inclined to believe that some of them took their 
title by brevet upon arriving at the proper age. They used 
to sit close together because so many of them were deaf, 
and their reminiscences ran upon the voyage of the Sea 
Duck or the wanderings of the Ocean Rover. The captains 
used occasionally to get into violent altercations over the 
tonnage of some craft ; they pulled away at little black 
pipes, consuming tobacco in fabulous quantities ; and, need- 
less to say, much of their attention was given to the weather. 
The appearance of an outsider was wont to cause a " dis- 
approving silence"; but the girls were once bold enough 
to overhear from behind the corner of the warehouse the 
oldest and wisest of them all. Captain Isaac Plorn, who was 
evidently giving one of his favorite stories, about some cloth 
he had once purchased in Bristol, which the shopkeep.er 
delayed sending till just as they were ready to sail. 

" I happened to take a look at that cloth," droned the cap- 
tain in a loud voice, "■ and as quick as I got sight of it, I spoke 




Copiiright 1893, hii Houghton, Mifflin .t- Co. 

The Old Captains. 
From" Deephaven," by Sarah Ornejewett. By permission of Houghton, Mifflin&Co. 



" Deephaven " 71 

onpleasant of that swindling English fellow, and the crew, 
they stood back. I was dreadful high-tempered in them days, 
mind ye ; and I had the gig manned. We was out in the 
stream, just ready to sail. 'Twas no use waiting any longer 
for the wind to change, and we was going north-about. I 
went ashore, and when I walks into his shop ye never see a 
creatur' so wilted. Ye see the miser'ble sculpin thought I'd 
never stop to open the goods, an' it was a chance I did, 
mind ye ! ' Lor,' says he, grinning and turning the color of 
a biled lobster, ' I s'posed ye were a standing out to sea by 
this time.' ' No,' says I, ' and I've got my men out here on 
the quay a landing that cloth o' yourn, and if you don't send 
just what I bought and paid for down there to go back in 
the gig within fifteen minutes, I'll take ye by the collar and 
drop ye into the dock.' I was twice the size of him, mind 
ye, and master strong. ' Don't ye like it?' says he, edging 
round ; ' I'll change it for ye, then.' Ter'ble perlite he 
was. ' Like it ? ' says I, ' it looks as if it were built of dog's 
hair and divil's wool, kicked together by spiders ; and it's 
coarser than Irish frieze ; three threads to an arm/u/,' 
says I." 

And there was Captain Lant, who knew all the local family 
history and how to bring the conversation around to a point 
where he could work in one of his pet stories, — the one he 
told with special relish, and with the solemn declaration that 
it was true, being a strange story of telepathy, which Miss 
Jewett gives in the captain's quaint and vivid language and 
with all his love of detail. The last letter received from the 
old captain by the young ladies on their return to Boston 
was headed with the latitude and longitude of Deephaven, 
and was signed, " Respectfully yours with esteem, Jacob 
Lant (condemned as unseaworthy)." 



72 Provincial Types in New England 

One of the fishermen whom Kate and her friend knew 
least of all was an odd-looking, silent sort of man, more sun- 
burnt and weather-beaten than any of the others. He was 
locally known as " Danny," and one morning, finding him at 
work cleaning fish in a shed, Kate's friend ventured the 
judgment that she thought mackerel were the prettiest fish 
that swim. " So do I, miss, not to say but I've seen more 
fancy-looking fish down in Southern waters, bright as any 
flower you ever see; but a mackerel," holding up one 
admiringly, " why, they're so clean-built and trig-looking ! 
Put a cod alongside, and he looks as lumbering as an old- 
fashioned Dutch brig aside a yacht." And tossing some 
fish heads to the cats that suddenly walked in as if they felt 
at home, he was reminded of a good cat story, which he 
proceeded to tell. At the conclusion of his narrative, when 
he expressed his preference for haddock over cod, and 
Kate asked whether it was cod or haddock that had a black 
stripe along their sides, Kate's friend cried out with superior 
knowledge, " Oh, those are haddock ; they say that the 
Devil caught a haddock once, and it slipped through his 
fingers and got scorched ; so all the haddock had the same 
mark afterward." Whereat Danny, smiling at her peculiar 
lore, remarked wisely, " Ye mustn't believe all the old 
stories ye hear, mind ye ! " 

There was also the prominent but somewhat visionary 
Captain Sands, who had a sort of marine museum in an 
old warehouse and was "a great hand for keeping things." 
He took the young ladies out to Black Rock to fish for 
cunners, and on the way gave them some of his judgments 
on the weather, observing that his *'gran'ther" used to say 
that " a growing moon chaws up the clouds." "Some folks 
lay all the weather to the moon, accordin' to where she 



" Deephaven ** 73 

quarters, and when she's in perigee we're going to have 
this kind of weather, and when she's in apogee she's got 
to do so and so for sartain ; but gran'ther he used to laugh 
at all them things. . . . Well, he did use to depend on 
the moon some ; everybody knows we aren't so likely to 
have foul weather in a growing moon as we be when she's 
waning. But some folks I could name, they can't do noth- 
ing without having the moon's opinion on it." 

Deephaven had as peculiar types, also, old Mrs. Bonny 
and Miss Sally Chauncey — the former, to whom the minister 
took the young ladies for a call, living a few miles from the 
town in company with a little black horse, a yellovv-and- 
white dog, and a flock of hens ; and the latter remaining 
alone in her ruined home and imagining in her harmless 
insanity that she was still part of the social aristocracy 
to which she formerly belonged. Mrs. Bonny's costume 
was somewhat masculine in its make-up, as she wore a 
man's coat, cut off so that it made an odd short jacket, and 
a pair of men's boots. She had, besides, short skirts, and 
two or three aprons, the inner one being a dress-apron 
and the outer ones being thrown aside on the entrance of 
the visitors. A tight cap with strings completed her cos- 
tume. Behind the stove in the kitchen a sick turkey was 
being nursed, while the flock of hens was remorselessly 
hustled out with a hemlock broom, since callers were 
present. 

In the conversation that ensued with the eccentric widow, 
the minister's reminder that Parson Reid preached the fol- 
lowing Sunday in the neighboring schoolhouse recalled to 
Mrs. Bonny old Parson Padelford. " He'd get worked up, 
and he'd shut up the Bible and preach the hair off your 
head, 'long at the end of the sermon." And she also 



74 Provincial Types in New England 

described to them with much rehsh a recent revival where 
she found one of her uncertain neighbors praying, — old 
Ben Patey, — "he always lays out to get converted, and 
he kep' it up diligent till I couldn't stand it no longer ; 
and by and by says he, ' I've been a wanderer ' ; and I up 
and says, 'Yes, you have, I'll back ye up on that, Ben; 
ye've wandered around my wood lot and spoilt half the 
likely young oaks and ashes I've got, a-stealing your basket 
stuff.' And the folks laughed out loud, and up he got and 
cleared. He's an awful old thief, and he's no idea of being 
anything else. I wa'n't a-goin' to set there and hear him 
makin' b'lieve to the Lord." 

Like Miss Sally Chauncey there were many in Deephaven 
who imagined they were still in the circle of the privileged 
class, and who had distinct pity for people who were obliged 
to Hve in other parts of the world. As Miss Honora Carew 
loftily remarked, the tone of Deephaven society had always 
been very high, and it was very nice that there had never 
been any manufacturing element introduced, — any dis- 
agreeable foreign population. Truly a delightful old sea- 
port is Deephaven, even if it is such only in name, — for 
Sarah Orne Jewett once dropped anchor there. 



PROVINCIAL TYPES IN THE SOUTH 
CHAPTER V 

A BRIEF SURVEY OF THE FIELD 

Since the Civil War the " New South " has made a remarkable 
record in creative Hterature, and among its truest and most 
sympathetic and artistic interpreters few have so high a 
rank as Thomas Nelson Page. Such books as "The Burial 
of the Guns," " Elsket," "The Old Gentleman of the Black 
Stock," and "Red Rock" give with close insight and un- 
fiiling charm phases of Southern life that have passed, or 
are passing, away ; while " In Ole Virginia," Mr. Page's 
best-known collection of short stories, has become almost 
a classic in its presentation, through the negro dialect, of the 
humor and moving pathos, the hospitality and grace and 
heroic chivalry, associated with the best Southern types. 
Whether we see the breaking tragedy of war and love when 
Miss Anne kisses the dead face of" Marse Chan," or whether 
we hear the loyal old negro, — when the minister asks 
who gives " Meh Lady" to the Northern " Cun'l," — re- 
spond proudly and protectingly, " Ole Billy," we know we 
are in the presence of brave, strong, beautiful life that was 
the finest fruitage of the Old South. 

Few more likable darkies have been created than F. 
Hopkinson Smith's Nebuchadnezzar — or " Chad " for short, 
— found in " Colonel Carter of Cartersville." As a delightfully 

75 



76 Provincial Types in the South 

humorous and sympathetic characterization of certain Vir- 
ginia types the book goes naturally with the literature of the 
South ; and while much of it is in the nature of an extrava- 
ganza, the figure and face of the inimitable Colonel Carter 
will long remain the index of an irresistible personality in 
American fiction. Whether he is royally presiding at dinner 
with the Major and Fitz, or financing in his imagination 
'' The Cartersville and VVarrentown Air Line Railroad " 
which is to furnish " the garden spot of Virginia " an outlet 
to the sea, or preparing in dead earnest for '* the field of 
honah," or gallantly filling his glass to " that greatest of all 
blessings — a true Southern lady," — he is a refreshing and 
alluring type of Southern humanity developed by the " old 
school." And then there is Miss Nancy with her subtle 
generosity and her rustling silk and her perfume of sweet 
lavender ; and the pugnacious Major Yancey, late of the 
Confederate army, with his affinity for mint julep ; and his 
impressive but bibulous friend, the Honorable I. B. Kerfoot, 
presiding " jedge " of the district court of Fairfax County, 
Virginia. 

The Georgia negro and " cracker " have been peculiarly 
fortunate in having as an interpreter Joel Chandler Harris, 
whose " Free Joe " and " Mingo " have had so wide a read- 
ing. As Mr. Hovvells suggests, Mr. Harris's work as a 
student of white character (albeit of low life) has not been 
fully recognized, by reason of the remarkable popularity of 
" Uncle Renms " and his absorbing animal stories. Yet 
" At Teague Poteet's " presents with subtle humor and 
dramatic sense the unique and adventurous life of the 
" moonshining " mountaineers, with its rough but loyal 
camaraderie, its sudden raids by revenue officers, its des- 
perate daring, and its instinctive hospitality. Hog Moun- 



A Brief Survey of the Field 77 

tain had its Teague Poteet, with his little fifty-acre farm 
overlooking Gullettsville, and it had its wild flowers, chief 
of which was Sis Poteet, daughter of Puss Poteet ; and the 
time came when Sis must needs be educated in the academy 
at Gullettsville. Whereat Sis protested because she had no 
" cloze." Teague, her father, tramping skyward for game, 
came suddenly upon the cap and worm of a disused whisky 
still, and saw the clothes problem solved. Whisky educated 
Sis Poteet ; and in time a deputy marshal. Woodward by 
name, fell in love with her (who could help it?) ; her neigh- 
bors, Mrs. Hightower and Mrs. Parmalee, gave their un- 
stinted approval ; and when Sis and *' Cap " were married, 
everybody on Hog Mountain sent a contribution, and even 
Uncle Jake Norris set a "jug er licker," that had actually 
been " stomped by the govunment," behind Teague's stable 
door for the necessary refreshment of the wedding guests. 
Teague and Uncle Jake and Sis are strongly individualized, 
and the unconventional charm of the mountain girl is an 
alluring element in the story. 

Mr. Harris's most distinct contribution to American 
fiction, however, is of course the legends of old plantation 
life as told in the unconsciously droll dialect of " Uncle 
Remus," that white-haired old philosopher who is the uni- 
versal authority on " Brer Rabbit," " Brer Wolf," " Mr. Pos- 
sum," and " Brer Fox," and all their little stratagems and 
wiles. One's imagination can always see the spectacled old 
darky, pegging at his coarse shoes or making horse-collars 
out of " wahoo " bark, while the large-eyed " little boy " sits 
close and watches his authoritative face for fear of losing a 
word about how Brer Rabbit outwitted Brer Fox, or how, for 
once, through the inimitable "Tar-Baby," Brer Fox proved 
too much for the redoubtable rabbit, or about the " awful 



78 Provincial Types in the South 

fate of Mr. Wolf" when Brer Rabbit cured him of fleas 
by scalding him to death in the big chest. How Mr. 
Rabbit finds his match at last in the subtlety of Brer Terra- 
pin, who beats him in the race and takes the money, much 
to the enjoyment of " Miss Meadows en de gals," and how 
Brer Fox, in his envious pursuit of Mr. Rabbit, who was 
" fishin' fer suckers " at the bottom of a well, went down in 
one bucket as Brer Rabbit came up in the other, singing 
philosophically, 

" Good-by, Brer Fox, take keer yo' cloze, 
Fer dis is de way de worril goes ; 
Some goes up en some goes down, 
You'll git ter de bottom all safe en soun'," — 

how all this happened with such beautiful inconsistency no 
one but Joel Chandler Harris can tell us. 

He has touched in so many delightful phases the old 
negro's sublime credulity, unconscious drollery, fellow-sym- 
pathy with the more helpless of the animals, and tender love 
of the "Httle boy," that it is difficult to decide whether 
" Uncle Remus and his Friends," or " Nights with Uncle 
Remus," or "Uncle Remus; His Songs and Sayings" 
should take precedence. But since Mr. Frost has illustrated 
the last-mentioned volume with more than a hundred draw- 
ings, some of which are a perfect embodiment of the spirit 
of the text, one is inchned to give his first choice to this 
particular collection of legends. Mr. Harris himself says, in 
his dedication of the book to Mr. Frost, "The book was 
mine, but now you have made it yours, both sap and pith." 
And to one who has delighted in the inimitable illustrations 
of the book the praise of Mr. Frost is not unmerited. 

Dividing in a way the attention of the literary world to 



A Brief Survey of the Field 79 

Southern fiction, Mr. George W. Cable stands with Mr. 
Harris, — though in so distinct a field that the question of 
which is the greater is neither important nor perhaps possi- 
ble. Even if Mr. Cable's shorter Creole stories are said in 
the judgment of some critics to have had their day (and a 
very bright one it was), it is hard to conceive when the 
delicate charm and trembling devotion of " Madame Del- 
phine " will cease to touch the imagination and sympathy ; 
or the rich humanity of Pere Jerome, or the mysterious per- 
sonality of Monsieur Vignevielle (alias Capitaine Lemaitre, 
the pirate), or the vision of white loveliness he stole that 
memorable night when the moon shone and the mocking- 
bird broke into song, or the prostrate figure of the dead 
mother at the confessional, — the quadroon mother who 
sinned for her daughter's happiness. Nor can one easily 
forget how under the enthusiastic eye of " Bonaventure " 
the children rang the bell for ''light, libbuty, and education" ; 
or the impressive visit to Bonaventure's school of the im- 
mortal George Washington Tarbox, a forerunner of his 
own "Album of Universal Information " ; or the secret but 
finally triumphant passion of Bonaventure for the queenlike 
Sidonie. 

With all the changing conditions that accompanied the 
cession of Louisiana in 1803 as a background, with the 
pall of slavery hanging over it, and the picturesqueness yet 
impossibility of an absurd but heroic devotion to a social 
theory of caste as an element in his story, Mr. Cable has 
written in " The Grandissimes " one of the most striking and 
artistic pieces of fiction in American literature. And although 
the Creoles of New Orleans have resented what they consider 
a prejudiced presentation of their attitude toward .slavery 
and the quadroon class, they have great cause for gratifica- 



8o Provincial Types in the South 

tion that a novelist of such imagination, insight, and deUcate 
touch has individuahzed in permanent Hterary form such rare 
and winning types as Honor^ Grandissime, the broad-minded 
and gracefully heroic merchant who foresaw the true des- 
tiny of his people ; such bewitching, shy, and dainty beings 
as Aurore de Grapion and her daughter Clotilde ; and such 
free-hearted, naive, and irrepressible traits as go to the mak- 
ing of Raoul Innerarity, the painter of " Louisiana rif-using 
to hanter de h-Union." The immigrant Joseph Frowenfeld 
may perhaps be criticised as a lay figure, but he stands for 
sanity and justness, and in the end reaches even the most 
fastidious of Creole hearts. Agricola Fusiher, as the em- 
bodiment of the unreasoning, ridiculous, but relentless, caste 
spirit and of opposition to the new ^' Am^ricain" government, 
may lack a certain definiteness of characterization ; but as, 
dying, he joins the hands of Aurore, the daughter of his old 
enemy, and Honor^, his nephew, — the promise of all that 
was best in the Creole future — he becomes a very signifi- 
cant and essential part of the story. As for Palmy re Phi- 
losophe, the vengeful practicer of voudou arts, — where in 
hterature will you find a stranger figure or one that appeals 
more directly to the imagination and sympathy? Her hope- 
less love for the white Honors and the hopeless love of her- 
self on the part of the less white Honore, "f. m. c." (free 
man of color), her strange power over the black giant, Bras- 
Coupe, and her terrorizing of Agricola himself, bring her 
into a wide circle of absorbing interest. Whether the hor- 
rible fate of poor Clemence seems, as it does in the judg- 
ment of some critics, to be unnecessarily detailed for the 
purposes of art, or whether by it Mr. Cable intended to illus- 
trate the power of superstition over master as well as slave, 
it doubtless is true enough to certain phases of slave life ; 



A Brief Survey of the Field 8i 

and for dramatic strength and haunting vividness the story 
of " Bras-Coup^ " stands out hke a picture painted in blood. 
Bras-Coupe, with chains on his feet, chains on his wrists, and 
an iron yoke about his neck ; Bras-Coup^, with his tiger eyes 
softening before Pahnyre, whom he loved ; Bras-Coupe, his 
gigantic length prostrate in the dust as he worshiped the sister 
of Honor^ Grandissime ; the same imperious giant, at the 
wedding, felling his Spanish master to the floor, or amid 
snakes and bats and lizards living a hunted outlaw in the 
heart of the swamps ; Bras-Coupe, with uplifted palm spread- 
ing his malediction over house and fields, or lassoed by the 
Spanish police in his wild and drunken dance, or strapped 
face down and smitten with the lash, or shorn of his ears 
and with severed tendons and bleeding back stretched on 
a bed of dry grass ; and last of all the mutilated slave hold- 
ing his dead master's little child and dropping his first tears 
upon the infant's hand, and inaudibly moving his lips as he 
waves his hand abroad and lifts the dreadful curse, — such 
is the series of pictures that Mr. Cable paints in this power- 
ful epitome of the savage side of slavery. But, after all, the 
surviving impressions of this great novel are not those of 
wrong and senseless social systems, but of those delightful 
and sparkHng women, — Aurore and Clotilde, — drawn with 
such exquisite art by Mr. Cable, and of that finished and 
masterly type of Creole character, Honor^ Grandissime. 

Besides their presentation in the work of Mr. Cable, New 
Orleans and Lauisiana have been fortunate also in the inti- 
mate and sympathetic treatment given them in the short 
stories of Grace King, such as ''Tales of a Time and 
Place," " Monsieur Motte," and " Balcony Stories " ; while 
Ruth McEnery Stuart, a native of Louisiana, has written 
with convincing closeness to Southern life the tale of 



82 Provincial Types in the South 

"Babette, A Little Creole Girl," " Sonny " (the story of an 
Arkansas boy), and *' Napoleon Jackson : The Gentleman 
of the Plush Rocker." 

Kentucky has a striking phase of her life set forth with 
essential truth and dramatic interest in such short stories as 
" A Cumberland Vendetta," by John Fox, Jr., — the charac- 
teristic family feud, which ends only with the extinction of 
the male members of the family, as is so vividly illustrated 
by Mr. Clemens in his " Huckleberry Finn," and in some of 
the stories of Miss Murfree. The desperate hand-to-hand 
fight on the mountain side — as pictured in " A Cumberland 
Vendetta" — between Rome Stetson and Jasper Lewallen, 
the boyish representatives of those rival families, was a criti- 
cal one, for it meant that whichever was " whooped " was 
thereby compelled to leave the mountains forever. The 
desperation and treachery and sudden death in this encoun- 
ter are given with a dramatic vividness that speaks well for 
the literary art of the writer ; and the final picture in which 
the hunted young outlaw, the last of his family, and Martha 
Lewallen, the last survivor of hers, set fire to her home, near 
the fresh-made graves of her father and brother, and face 
together the dying sunset and the unknown West, is a 
graphic and pathetic illustration of the desolating effects of 
family hatreds. Kentucky is to be congratulated, also, in 
having a citizen who appreciates the romance of her history, 
and is able, as is James Lane Allen, to throw over it the 
glamor of his own imagination. His " Flute and Violin, 
and Other Kentucky Stories," his " Kentucky Cardinal " 
and " Choir Invisible," and his romance of the Kentucky 
hemp fields, — ''The Reign of Law," — abound in poetic 
description of their native setting and in loyal sentiment for 
the history of the state. 



A Brief Survey of the Field 83 

Eastern Tennessee found in Miss Murfree, better known 
as "Charles Egbert Craddock," an interpreter that was 
thoroughly familiar with the background of her stories, ap- 
preciated with an artist's love of color the marvelous pano- 
rama of sky and mountain scenery, and entered with full 
sympathy and loving insight into the strange, free, supersti- 
tious, and primitive lives of the isolated mountaineers. So 
much of description is given at times to the environment 
of sky and peak, that Miss Murfree is sometimes spoken of as 
belonging to the "landscape school" in literary art; and it 
must be confessed that her frequently elaborate descriptive 
writing seems now and then to delay the movement of her 
stories, and, except to the highly poetic mind, grows somewhat 
wearisome. But, nevertheless, when one is past these par- 
ticular descriptive portions, and is immersed in the intense 
action of her vigorous characters, one is sure to feel the rare 
originality of her work and to be absorbed in the dramatic 
interest with which she portrays the desperate " moon- 
shiner" and the shy mountain lover, the superstitiously 
religious folk who get " convicted," the gaunt and work- 
worn old women, and the wild, sweet, unsophisticated 
beauty and proud strength of will that belong to certain 
girlish types among the villages and remote farms of the 
mountain regions of Tennessee. The latter type is seen in 
the alluring '' Euphemy " Sims, who, in "The Juggler," 
makes her lover, Owen Haines, decide between herself and 
" prayin' for the power " in public, and who, by the charm 
of her great gray eyes and the sparkles of gold in her hair, 
and the innocent sweetness of her nature, wins the tempo- 
rary love of the "Juggler" himself, Lucien Royce, the 
accomplished man of the city and the world. 

" In the Clouds," and the collection of short stories enti- 



84 Provincial Types in the South 

tied *' In the Tennessee Mountains," and " In the Stranger 
People's Country," contain, also. Miss Murfree's varied and 
successful treatment of mountain life ; but it is in " The 
Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains " that one gets the 
largest impression of her knowledge of primitive types, and 
of her versatile skill in portraying sudden and dramatic 
action. The opening dialogue far up the mountain side 
between Dorinda Cayce, the old " moonshiner's " daughter, 
and her outlawed lover. Rick Tyler, presents a unique 
picture, — Dorinda, impressive in her simple beauty and 
buoyant youthfulness, plowing the corn with the gaunt old 
ox, and Rick, with jingling spurs and dangling pistols, help- 
ing her with his horse. A vivid touch of the dramatic is 
felt when old " Ground-hog " Cayce, on his return at night, 
learns from " Dorindy " that 'Cajah Green, the sheriff in 
pursuit of Rick, had threatened her with jail if she refused to 
tell the whereabouts of her lover. The fierce old man, hold- 
ing his rifle in the moonlight, insisted that his insulted 
daughter should make a mark on its barrel in memory of 
the sheriffs words ; but she, knowing that the mark meant 
certain death to the sheriff, instinctively drew back ; where- 
upon her brother seized her hand, which trembUngly held 
the long, sharp knife, and guided it in the form of a cross 
near the rifle's muzzle. 

Rick's desperate visit to the " Settlemint " to reenforce 
his powder supply ; his treacherous capture by Gid Fletcher, 
the blacksmith, for blood money ; the appealing, tempes- 
tuous tones of Parson Kelsey, the " Prophet of the Great 
Smoky Mountains," as he wrestled in prayer on the great 
" bald " ; his meeting with the blacksmith, and his heroic 
turning of his other cheek when the blacksmith had suddenly 
struck him in the face; his uncompromising " prophecy " 



A Brief Survey of the Field 85 

that Micajah Green would never be reelected sheriff; his 
holding the blacksmith at bay with a '' six-shooter " to end 
the gander-pulling contest ; and the mystifying escape of 
Rick from his temporary prison in the blacksmith shop, — 
all these are set forth with a picturesque power that makes 
them Hve in the memory. 

Brother Jake Tobin's unctuous and dramatic reading of 
the Scriptures in the little log meeting-house on Sunday, 
and his desperate calling on Brother Reuben Bates to " lead 
in prayer," were only prehminary to the expected sermon 
by Hi Kelsey, the "prophet" of the Big Smoky; and not 
even the tragic words of Arthur Dimmesdale on the scaffold, 
when he revealed the " scarlet letter " and made his dying 
confession, had a more horrifying and sensational effect 
than the prophet's confession that he had lost his faith, and 
that Hell and the Devil had prevailed against him. 

What more satisfying picture than that of the worn and 
armed outlaw. Rick, sitting before the fire and stealing a 
sweet interview with Dorinda spinning at her wheel. And 
how exultant his heart when Dorinda's flashing eyes told 
him that she would dare to marry him and live in his house, 
even though a rifle's muzzle or a sheriff's revolver might 
peek through the rails of the fence ! And when he finally 
announced to her that the real murderer had confessed the 
crime with which he himself was charged, his delight over 
her faith in his valor took the repeated form of this proud 
exclamation : " An' ye warn't afeard ! Ye would hev mar- 
ried me and resked it. Ye warn't afeard ! " 

The sudden discovery and destruction of Cayce's ilHcit still 
in the cave ; the later visit of old Ground-hog Cayce him- 
self to his dismantled den and the silent nursing of his wrath ; 
the growing inflexibility and hopelessness of Dorinda's face 



86 Provincial Types in the South 

which began to look even like her father's lowering coun- 
tenance ; her continued unswerving sympathy with the ac- 
cused '' prophet " and her assumed indifference to her lover 
Rick; the acquittal of the parson and his terrific arraign- 
ment of his enemies in court ; his strange colloquy with the 
murderous Cayces the night of the snow-storm, when he pro- 
nounced the direful prophecy of future penalties ; the wild 
cry for help in the night when 'Cajah Green was captured, 
and the wilder ride to the mouth of the cave ; and then 
the truly vicarious sacrifice of the " prophet " as in the con- 
fusion of darkness and haste he was hurled to his death 
instead of his arch-enemy, the sheriff, — such a narrative im- 
presses one not only as a strong piece of dramatic writing 
but as a convincing "human document " filled with knowl- 
edge of a litde-known and peculiar people. 



CHAPTER VI 
"IN OLE VIRGINIA" BY THOMAS NELSON PAGE 

In this collection of short stories, written by a Southerner 
about the South, there are two or three that have already 
become classic, hke " Marse Chan," " Meh Lady," and 
*' Polly." One speaks of them now as if they were a recog- 
nized part of American Hterature ; and it is somewhat sur- 
prising to learn that the first-mentioned story, when sent to 
the old Scribnei^'s Monthly, brought but eighty dollars, and 
was held for four years before pubHcation, finally appearing 
in the new Century magazine. 

Despite the widespread prejudice against mere dialect as 
a vehicle for literary expression, it must be confessed that 
" Marse Chan " and " Meh Lady " would lose much of their 
unique charm and their closeness to Southern life if they 
did not seem to emanate from the inmost hearts and experi- 
ences of those loyal old " darkies," Sam and Billy. These 
faithful souls are the natural, unaffected exponents of a phase 
of Southern life that has largely passed away, — they were 
an integral and essential part of the social system that is 
here reflected and characterized in all its free-hearted hos- 
pitality, its quick sense of honor and chivalry, its impulsive 
hot-headedness, and its instinctive bravery. 

Unconsciously typical of the Old South was the negro 
standing with a hoe and a watering-pot in his hand, waiting 

87 



88 Provincial Types in the South 

at the " worm-fence " for the advent down the path of a 
noble-looking old setter, gray with age and over-round from 
too abmidant feeding. The setter, like some old-time 
planter, sauntered slowly, and in lordly oblivion of the negro, 
up to the fence, while the latter began to take down the 
rails, talking meanwhile to the dog in a pretended tone of 
criticism : " Now, I got to pull down de gap, I suppose ! 
Yo' so sp'ilt yo' kyahn hardly walk. Jes' ez able to git over 
it as I is ! Jes' hke white folks — think *cuz you's white and 
I's black, 1 got to wait on yo' all de time. Ne'm mine, I 
ain' gwi' do it ! " As his dogship marched sedately through 
the " gap " and down the road, the negro suddenly dis- 
covered a stranger looking on, and hastened to remark 
somewhat apologetically : " He know I don' mean nothin' 
by what I sez. He's Marse Chan's dawg, an' he's so ole he 
kyahn git long no pearter. He know I'se jes' prodjickin' 
wid 'im." 

The darky explained to the stranger that '' Marse Chan," 
(or Channin') was his young master, that the place with " de 
rock gate-pos's " which the stranger had just passed was 
" ole Cun'l Chamb'lin's," and that since the war '^ our place " 
had been acquired by certain " unknowns " who were prob- 
ably " half-strainers." 

At the request of the stranger to tell him all about " Marse 
Chan " the old negro recalled, " jes' like 'twuz yistiddy," how 
"ole marster " (Marse Chan's father), smiling "wusn' a 
'possum," came out on the porch with his new-born son in 
his arms, and catching sight of Sam (the narrator, who was 
then but eight years old), called him up on the porch and 
put the baby in his arms, with the solemn injunction that 
Sam was to be the young master's body-servant as long as 
he lived. " Yo' jes' ought to a-heard de folks sayin', * Lawd ! 



"In Ole Virginia" 89 

marster, dat boy'U drap dat chile ! ' ' Naw, he won't,' sez 
marster ; ' I kin trust 'im.' " And then the old master walked 
after Sam carrying the young master, until Sam entered the 
house and laid his precious burden on the bed. 

Sam recalled, too, how Marse Chan, when in school, once 
carried Miss Anne, Colonel ChamberUn's little daughter, on 
his shoulders across a swollen creek, and how the next day, 
when his father gave him a pony to show his pleasure over 
his son's chivalry, Marse Chan came walking home from 
school, having given his pony to Miss Anne. " ' Yes,' sez 
ole marster, laughin', ' I s'pose you's already done giv' her 
yo'se'f, an' nex' thing I know you'll be givin' her this planta- 
tion and all my niggers.' " It was only a fortnight later 
that Colonel Chamberlin invited the " ole marster " and his 
whole family over to dinner, — expressly naming Marse 
Chan in the note, — and after dinner two ponies stood at 
the door, the one Marse Chan had given Miss Anne, and 
the other a present to Marse Chan from the Colonel. And 
after a " gre't " speech by the Colonel, the two young lovers 
went off to ride, while the " grown folks " laughed and 
chatted and smoked their cigars. 

To the eye of Sam's endearing memory those were the 
good old times, — " de bes' Sam ever see ! Dey wuz, in 
fac' ! Niggers didn' hed nothin' 't all to do — jes' hed to 
'ten' to de feedin' an' cleanin' de horses, an' doin' what de 
marster tell 'em to do ; an' when dey wuz sick, dey had 
things sont 'em out de house, an' de same doctor come 
to see 'em whar 'ten' to de white folks when dey wuz po'ly. 
Dyar warn' no trouble nor nothin'." 

The considerate affection shown for the young Sam by 
Marse Chan was illustrated by the Httle incident of the 
punishment inflicted on both of them by the " ole marster " 



90 Provincial Types in the South 

for sliding down the straw-stacks against orders. The master 
first whipped young Marse Chan and then began on Sam, 
who was using his lungs to Hghten the severity of his 
punishment. Marse Chan took his own whipping without 
a murmur ; " but soon ez he commence warmin' me 
an' I begin to holler, Marse Chan he bu'st out cryin', 
an' stept right in befo' old marster, an' ketchin' de whup, 
sed : — 

" ' Stop, seh ! Yo' sha'n't whup 'im ; he b'longs to me, 
an' ef you hit 'im another lick I'll set 'im free ! ' . . . 

" Marse Chan he warn' mo'n eight years ole, an' dyah 
dey wuz — ole marster standin' wid he whup raised up, 
an' Marse Chan red an' cryin', hol'in' on to it, an' sayin' I 
b'longs to 'im. 

" Ole marster, he raise' de whup, an' den he drapt it, 
an' broke out in a smile over he face, an' he chuck Marse 
Chan onder de chin, an' tu'n right roun' an' went away, 
laughin' to hisse'f ; an' I heah 'im tellin' ole missis dat evenin', 
an' laughin' 'bout it." 

Sam's vivid memory saw again the picture of the dawnlight 
on the river when Marse Chan and old Colonel Chamberlin 
fought their famous duel that grew out of the unfounded 
charges against Marse Chan's father made by the Colonel 
in a political speech. Sam could see again the early morn- 
ing light on his young master's face, and could hear the 
ominous voice of one of the seconds saying, " Gentlemen, 
are you ready? " 

" An' he sez, ' Fire, one, two ' — an' ez he said * one ' ole 
Cun'l Chamb'lin raised he pistil an' shot right at Marse 
Chan. De ball went th'oo' his hat. I seen he hat sort o' 
settle on he head ez de bullit hit it, an' /le jes' tilted his 
pistil up in de a'r an' shot — bang; an' ez de pistil went 



"In Ole Virginia" 91 

bang, he sez to Cun'l Chamb'lin, ' I mek you a present to 
yo' fam'ly, seh ! ' . . . 

" But ole Cun'l Chamb'lin he nuver did furgive Marse 
Chan, an' Miss Anne she got mad too. Wimmens is mons'us 
onreasonable nohow. Dey's jes' Hke a catfish : you can 
n' tek hole on 'em Hke udder folks, an' when you gits 'm 
yo' can n' always hole 'em." 

In sympathetic and picturesque language the old darky 
recounted the last meeting between Marse Chan and Miss 
Anne, as they stood together in the moonlight, and Sam 
overheard the fateful words of the implacable Southern 
woman, "'But I don' love yo'.' (Jes' dem th'ee wuds !) 
De wuds fall right slow — Hke dirt falls out a spade on a 
coffin when yo's buryin' anybody, an' seys, *Uth to uth.' 
Marse Chan he jes' let her hand drap, an' he stiddy hisse'f 
'g'inst de gate-pos', an' he didn' speak torekly." 

Sam's relation of how Marse Chan went to the war, of how 
in the tent he knocked down Mr. Ronny for speaking con- 
temptuously of Colonel Chamberlin and his daughter, and 
of the eifect on Marse Chan's face of the letter of reconcilia- 
tion and love he received from Miss Anne, — brings the 
vivid narrative to Marse Chan's splendid charge on the 
field at the head of the regiment, carrying its fallen flag up 
the hill, and inspiring it by his dauntless leadership. " I 
seen 'im when he went, de sorrel four good lengths ahead 
o' ev'ry urr boss, jes' Hke he use' to be in a fox-hunt, an' 
de whole rigimint right arfter him." But suddenly the 
sorrel came galloping back with flying mane, and the rein 
hanging down on one side to his knee, — and poor Sam 
knew that Marse Chan must be killed. He found his mas- 
ter among the dead men, still holding in his hand the flag 
as he lay beneath one of the guns. '• I tu'n 'im over an' 



9^ Provincial Types in the South 

call 'im, ' Marse Chan ! ' but 't wan' no use, he wuz done gone 
home, sho' 'nuff. I pick' 'im up in my arms wid de fleg 
still in he han's, an' toted 'im back jes' Hke I did dat day 
when he wuz a baby, an' ole marster gin 'im to me in my 
arms, an' sez he could trus' me, an' tell me to tek keer on 
'im long ez he lived." 

And when Sam reached home with the body in the ambu- 
lance and had gone over to let Miss Anne know the awful 
news, that " Marse Chan he done got he furlough," and she 
had ridden back and prostrated herself before Marse Chan's 
old mother, there is the close of the tragic story as told by 
the loyal old negro in these words : — 

" Ole missis stood for 'bout a minit lookin' down at her, 
an' den she drapt down on de flo' by her, an' took her in 
bofe her arms. 

" I couldn' see, 1 wuz cryin' so myse'f, an' ev'ybody wuz 
cryin'. But dey went in arfter a while in de parlor, an' shet 
de do' ; an' I heahd 'em say. Miss Anne she tuk de coffin in 
her arms an' kissed it, an' kissed Marse Chan, an' call 'im by 
his name, an' her darlin', an' ole missis lef ' her cryin' in dyar 
tell some one on 'em went in, an' found her done faint on de 
flo'." And it was not long before Miss Anne, broken by nursing 
in the hospitals and by fever and sorrow, was laid beside the 
body of Marse Chan. So pathetic and brave and illuminating 
a story concerning the South at the beginning of the Civil War 
it would be difficult to find elsewhere in American literature. 

In this collection of short stories "Unc' Edinburg's 
Drowndin' " is considered by Mr. Page himself as perhaps 
his best picture of old Virginia society ; and it does indeed 
present a variety of phases of the plantation and negro 
life, drawn with convincing art and a charming element of 
relieving humor. 



" In Ole Virginia" 93 

" Ole Billy," peeling cedar fish-poles and introducing with 
loving detail his story of " Meh Lady," is a typical figure of 
the loyal, sympathetic, and humorous old house servant that 
Mr. Page delights to use, and somewhat idealizes, as the 
spokesman in his dialect stories of the South. Billy, in re- 
calling the looks and ways of Meh Lady as a little girl, bent 
on following her ambitious brother, Marse Phil, said that she 
used to look " white 'mong dem urr chil'ns as a clump o' 
blackberry blossoms 'mong de blackberries. . . . An' her 
eyes ! I do b'lieve she laugh mo' wid 'em 'n wid her mouf. 
She was de 'light o' dis plantation ! When she'd come in 
you' house 'twuz like you'd shove back de winder an' let 
piece o' de sun in on de flo' — you could almos' see by 
her ! " She and Marse Phil, Billy declared, were practically 
inseparable in all their pursuits until he went to college, and 
even till he went into the war. And then the old darky 
relates, with all the vivid detail of an eye-witness, how he 
started at dawn with the carriage and the " Mistis " and 
Meh Lady to drive to the battle-field where Marse Phil lay 
wounded unto death. " I see de soldiers all 'long de road 
look at me, an' some on 'em holler to me dat I cyarn' go 
dat way ; but I ain't pay no 'tention to 'em, I jes' push on." 
Presently he saw in an oat field the house to which Marse 
Phil had been taken, and he was urging on the horses when 
three or four men standing in the roadway ahead, cried, 
" Halt." They cried " Halt " a second time, noticing that 
he paid no attention to them ; and finally " a spreckle-face 
feller run up an' ketch Remus' head, an' anurr one done 
p'int he gun right at me." The old servant protested his 
surprise that they didn't have any better sense than to 
" ketch holt Mistis' horses," and was just on the point of 
using his whip on one of the men, when the door of the car- 



94 Provincial Types in the South 

riage opened and the " Mistis " stepped out. She told them 
that her son was dying in the house just beyond and she was 
going to him. *' She talk mighty sorf but mighty 'termined 
like. Dee sort o' reason wid her, but she jes' walk on by 
wid her head up, an' tell me to foller her, an' dat I did, 
mon ! an' lef 'em dyah in de road holdin' dee gun. De 
whole army couldn' 'a' keep her fum Marse Phil den." 
Marse Phil died that night in his mother's arms as peace- 
fully as a baby, saying it was just like the old times when he 
used to go to sleep in her lap in his own room, with her arms 
around him. And the colonel of his regiment wrote Marse 
Phil's mother how the Confederacy mourned his loss, and 
how he was made a colonel on the day he was shot ; and 
the proud negro added in his narrative that Marse Phil's 
new title of honor was on the tombstone and that one could 
still go into the garden and read it. 

The panic among the darkies on the sudden advent of 
the Yankees; the insults of the irresponsible Northern sol- 
diery ; the protecting attitude of " Ole Billy " standing, ax in 
hand ; the gallant entrance of Captain Wilton of the Northern 
army — though half Virginian and kinsman to Meh Lady ; 
the typical unrelenting pride of Meh Lady and the " Mistis " ; 
the captain's strenuous ride with a letter from General 
McClellan ; the turning of the old Southern home into a hos- 
pital for Southern soldiers, with " Mistis " and Meh Lady as 
nurses ; the bringing of the wounded Northern soldier to the 
house and tenderly nursing him back to life, his interesting 
convalescence and his unmistakable love for Meh Lady, 
with her reluctant refusal to marry him on the ground that 
she couldn't marry a Union soldier, — all come in as striking 
incidents in the development of the story. And the swift 
reduction of the " Mistis " and Meh Lady to extremest 



" In Ole Virginia'* 95 

poverty ; the mortgaging of the plantation ; the bitter sur- 
render of Richmond and General Lee ; the renewed effort 
of Colonel Wilton to be recognized as a lover ; Billy's 
humorous purchase of the mule to help Meh Lady ; her 
brave efforts at school teaching ; and the fading out of her 
mother's hfe, — these continue the pathetic narrative to the 
terrible isolation of Meh Lady, and the final uncertain visit 
of the Northern suitor. Meh Lady's second refusal, old 
Hannah's message to the Colonel and her upbraiding him 
with being no " pertector to the chile," and the Colonel's 
taking of the reins into his own hands and insisting on an 
immediate marriage, carry us forward to his important ride 
to the court-house, with " Ole Billy " following on the col- 
lapsing mule. But alas ! Billy's memory as to Meh Lady's 
age was all too misty. " I know her age, 'cause I right dyah 
when she born ; but how ole she is, I don' know." It 
looked, under the circumstances, as if they would have to 
take a forty-mile ride back to the family records, when sud- 
denly the old negro connected Meh Lady's birth with that 
of Marse Phil, a legal record of his words was made, the 
clerk of the court was able himself to confirm the truth of 
the negro's memory, and the necessary license was 
triumphantly carried back. 

Such preparations that morning for the unexpected wed- 
ding ! " Hannah she sut'n'y wuz comical, she ironin' an' 
sewin' dyah so induschus she oon' le' me come in meh own 
house." And when they were all ready for the ceremony, 
Hannah suddenly flung the door wide open, "An' Meh 
Lady walk out ! Gord ! ef I didn' think 'twuz a angel. 
She Stan' dyah jes' white as snow fum her head to way back 
down on de flo' behine her, an' her veil done fall roun' her 
like white mist, an' some roses in her han'. Ef it didn' 



g6 Provincial Types in the South 

look like de sun done come th'oo de chahraber do' vvid her, 
an' blaze all over de styars, an' de Cun'l he look like she 
bline him. . . . An' dyah facin' Mistis' picture an' Marse 
Phil's (tooken when he vvuz a little boy), lookin' down at 
'em bofe, dee wuz married." 

The point in the ceremony where the minister asks " Who 
gives this woman to this man?" seemed to the faithful 
darky to make some demand upon himself. " I don' know 
huccome 'twuz, but I think 'bout Marse Jeems an' Mistis 
when he ax me dat, an' Marse Phil, whar all dead, an' all de 
scufflin' we done been th'oo, an' how de chile ain' got no 
body to teck her part now 'sep jes' me ; an' now when he 
wait an' look at me dat way, an' ax me dat, I 'bleeged to 
speak up ; I jes' step for'ard an' say, ' Ole Billy.' " 

" In Ole Virginia " is completed by the weird and 
haunting sketch of' No Haid Pawn," " Ole 'Stracted," and 
the delightful " Polly," — with its inimitable Colonel, — a 
charming kinsman of Hopkinson Smith's '* Colonel Carter," 
— its Drinkwater Torm, who was always on the point of 
being sold the following morning, and the irresistible Polly 
herself, who knew so well the diplomatic uses of mint. 



CHAPTER VII 

"COLONEL CARTER OF CARTERSVILLE " BY 
F. HOPKINSON SMITH 

There is probably no happier illustration of F. Hopkin- 
son Smith's versatility as a story writer than that found in 
his " Colonel Carter of Cartersville," where he has drawn, 
with somewhat extravagant hand, perhaps, a Southern type 
of rare good fellowship, real bravery and chivalry, bound- 
less hospitality, and delightfully visionary schemes. He be- 
longs to that group of old-time Southern gentlemen so 
attractively portrayed by Thomas Nelson Page in " Marse 
Chan " " Meh Lady," and " Polly," and has already become 
a genial companion to a host of readers. And Chad — com- 
bination of cook, butler, body-servant, and boots — is a 
negro type that deserves to associate with Mr. Page's Sam 
and Billy and Torm. 

The preparations for the Colonel's first dinner are sig- 
nificant of the Colonel's improvident but irresistible ways, — 
he wrote to his friend, the Major : " Will you lend me half 
a dozen napkins — mine are all in the wash, and I want 
enough to carry me over Sunday. Chad will bring, with your 
permission, the extra pair of andirons you spoke of." As 
the Major waited for his host's appearance, he was impressed 
by the cozy, charming interior of the Colonel's dining room, 
— an irregularly shaped apartment, panelled with a dark wood 

L.?FC. 5' 



98 Provincial Types in the South 

running half way to the low ceiling, and containing two fire- 
places — " an open wood fire which laughed at me from be- 
hind my own andirons, and an old-fashioned EngHsh grate 
set into the chimney with wide hobs — convenient and nec- 
essary for the various brews and mixtures for which the 
Colonel was famous." The Major also had time to notice the 
snow-white cloth resplendent in old India blue, the pair of 
silver coasters — heirlooms from Carter Hall — the silver 
candelabra with candles — as the Colonel despised gas — 
and some of the etchings and sketches from his own studio, 
which he had loaned to the appreciative Colonel. Suddenly 
he heard the Colonel calling down the back stairs : '' Not a 
minute over eighteen, Chad. You ruined those ducks last 
Sunday." And the next moment he had his guest by the 
hand. " My dear Major, I am pa'alyzed to think I kep' you 
waitin'. . . . Have a drop of sherry and a dash of bitters, 
or shall we wait for Fitzpatrick? You don't know Fitz? 
Most extraord'nary man ; a great mind, suh ; Hterature, 
science, politics, finance, everything at his fingers' ends. . . . 
Put yo' body in that chair and yo' feet on the fender — my 
fire and yo' fender ! No, Fitz's fender and yo' andirons ! 
Charmin' combination ! " 

And to make the picture of this hospitable Southerner com- 
plete the Major gives this bit of description : '^ He is per- 
haps fifty years of age, tall and slightly built. His iron-gray 
hair is brushed straight back from his forehead, overlapping 
his collar behind. His eyes are deep-set and twinkhng; 
nose prominent; cheeks slightly sunken; brow wide and 
high ; and chin and jaw strong and marked. His mustache 
droops over a firm, well-cut mouth and unites at its ends 
with a gray goatee which rests on his shirt front. 

" Like most Southerners living away from great cities, his 





Copyright 1891, h;i Houghton, Mifflin a; Co. 

" My Fire is my Friend." 

From " Colonel Carter of Cartersvilie," by F Hopkinson Smith. By permission of 
Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 



" Colonel Carter of Cartersville " 



99 



voice is soft and low, and tempered with a cadence that is 
delicious. 

" He wears a black broadcloth coat — a double-breasted 
garment — with similar colored waistcoat and trousers, a 
turn-down collar, a shirt of many plaits which is under- 
starched and over-wrinkled but always clean, large cuffs 
very much frayed, a narrow black or white tie, and low 
shoes with white cotton stockings." 

This black broadcloth coat, by the way, the Colonel used 
to adapt to various functions : for a funeral or other serious 
matter on his mind the Colonel wore this coat buttoned 
close up under his chin, showing only the upper edge of his 
white collar and the stray end of a black cravat ; for dinner 
he buttoned it lower down, revealing a bit of his plaited 
shirt ; and for a wedding it was thrown wide open, discover- 
ing a stiff, starched, white waistcoat with ivory buttons and 
snowy neck-cloth. 

As the Major incidentally remarks, the Colonel was "hos- 
pitable to the verge of beggary," enthusiastic as he was 
visionary, tender-hearted and happy as a boy, proud of his 
ancestry, his state, and himself, and an unswerving believer 
in states' rights, slavery, and the Confederacy ; " and away 
down in the bottom of his soul still clinging to the behef 
that the poor white trash of the earth includes about every- 
body outside of Fairfax County." He was beyond the pos- 
sibility of "reconstruction," and he chafed continually under 
what he believed to be the tyranny of "the Government," 
which latter term, however, really referred to the distribu- 
tion of certain local offices in his own immediate vicinity. 

Upon the belated arrival of the thick-set, round-faced 
Fitzpatrick, the Colonel sprang forward, seizing him by the 
shoulders, and exclaiming, " What the devil do you mean, 

LofC. 



lOO Provincial Types in the South 

Fitz, by comin' ten minutes late? Don't you know, suh, 
that the burnin' of a canvasback is a crime? — Stuck in the 
snow? Well, I'll forgive you this once, but Chad won't. 
Give me yo' coat — bless me ! it is as wet as a setter 
dog. . . . Major, Fitz ! — Fitz, the Major ! Take hold of 
each other." And then came the vigorous signal for dinner, 
— three raps on the floor with a poker, and a voice rumbled 
up from below: "Comin', sah ! " And Chad dished the 
dinner. " To dine well was with him an inherited instinct. 
. . . To share with you his last crust was a part of his 
religion ; to eat alone, a crime." 

Immediately at the close of the next dinner given by the 
Colonel, he began the discussion with Fitzpatrick and the 
Major of his darling scheme of furnishing, by his proposed 
" Cartersville and Warrentown Air Line Railroad," an outlet 
to the sea for " the garden spot of Virginia," a plan for 
which he illustrated, — in lieu of the map which he had left 
at the office, — by the use at significant points of the mus- 
tard-pot, salt-cellar, cheese, and carving-knife. To the 
Major's practical inquiry as to the advantage of building 
twelve additional miles of road to reach Carter Hall, the 
Colonel rose to his feet in indignant reply : " Any advantage ? 
Major, I am surprised at you ! A place settled mo' than one 
hundred years ago, belongin' to one of the vehy fust fam'lies 
of Virginia, not to be of any advantage to a new enterprise 
like this ! Why, suh, it will give an air of respectabihty to 
the whole thing that nothing else could ever do. Leave 
out Caarter Hall, suh, and you pa'alyze the whole scheme." 
The prospectus for the new railroad, which Fitz had some- 
what modified to meet the requirements of business, seemed 
to the Colonel to be deficient in one respect, — it provided 
for no subscriptions in Cartersville, although they were to be 



"Colonel Carter of Cartersville" loi 

opened simultaneously in New York, London, and Rich- 
mond. To Fitzpatrick's innocent question as to whether 
there was any money in Cartersville, the Colonel proudly 
replied : " No, suh, not much ; but we can subsc7-ibe, can't 
we? The name and influence of our leadin' citizens would 
give tone and dignity to any subscription list. Think of 
this, suh ! " Another criticism of the document by the 
Colonel was due to Fitzpatrick's inserted phrase, *' full pro- 
tection guaranteed." When the Colonel was told that pro- 
tection meant the right to foreclose the mortgage on the 
non-payment of interest, he authoritatively exclaimed : 
"Put yo' pencil through that line, quick — none of that for 
me. This fo'closure business has ruined haalf the gentlemen 
in our county, suh. But for that fooHshness two thirds of 
our fust fam'lies would still be livin' in their homes. No, 
suh, strike it out ! " 

One of the Colonel's unique financial measures in con- 
nection with his great railroad scheme was the proposed 
issuance of Deferred Debentured Bonds. " No, gentlemen, 
the plan is not only fair, but reasonable. Two years is not 
a long period of time in which to foster a great enterprise 
like the C. & W. A. L. R. R., and it is for this purpose that 
I issue the Deferred Debentures. Deferred, — put off; 
Debenture — owed. What we owe we put off. Simple, 
easily understood, and honest." And when the Major and 
Fitz expressed a willingness to join him in subscribing for 
the fifty thousand founders' shares, the Colonel's exhilaration 
rose to an ecstatic point : " You overwhelm me, gentlemen," 
rising from his chair and seizing them by the hands. . . . 
" Fill yo' glasses and join me in a sentiment that is dear to 
me as my Hfe, — ' The Garden Spot of Virginia in search of 
an Outlet to the Sea.' " 



I02 Provincial Types in the South 

On one of the Major's calls, when the Colonel himself was 
unavoidably detained, Chad grew reminiscent of the good 
old days in Virginia when the Colonel's father, General John 
Carter, was alive, and when'Chad's prospective wife, Henny, 
brought him perilously near trouble. Finding a goose roast- 
ing in the big oven, Henny cut off a leg and disappeared 
round the kitchen corner with the leg in her mouth. Hor- 
rified at what might happen when " Marse John " discovered 
at dinner the lack of the leg in the presence of " quality," 
Chad attempted to deny the fact that roast goose was in- 
tended for dinner and served everything else but that. 
When confronted with the evidence that he helped pick the 
goose, Chad reluctantly laid it down on the table with the 
one leg on the upper side. A young lady guest chose a 
goose leg instead of ham, and a gentleman guest asked for 
the other leg. " Major, you oughter seen ole Marsa lookin' 
for de udder leg ob dat goose ! He rolled him ober on de 
dish, dis way an' dat way, an' den he jabbed dat ole bone- 
handled caarvin'-fork in him an' hel' him up ober de dish 
an' looked under him an' on top ob him, an' den he says, 
kinder sad hke, * Chad, where is de udder leg ob dat 
goose?' 'It didn't hab none,' say I. 'You mean ter say, 
Chad, dat de gooses on my plantation on'y got one leg?' 
' Some ob 'em has an' some ob em ain't. You see, Marsa, 
we got two kinds in de pond, an' we was a httle boddered 
to-day, so Mammy Jane cooked dis one 'cause I cotched it 
fust.' " Whereupon the master remarked ominously to 
Chad : " I'll settle with you after dinner." After dinner 
the master and his guests, accompanied by the trembling 
Chad, walked down to the duck-pond, and " dar was de gooses 
sittin' on a log in de middle of dat ole green goose-pond 
wid one leg stuck down — so — an' de udder tucked under 



"Colonel Carter of Cartersville " 103 

de wing." Chad called the attention of his master to the 
peculiar fact, while all the guests laughed. " ' Stop, you black 
scoun'rel ! ' Marsa John says, his face gittin' white an' he 
a-jerkin' his handkerchief from his pocket. ' Shoo ! ' " — 
" Major, I hope to have my brains kicked out by a lame 
grasshopper if ebery one ob dem gooses didn't put down 
de udder foot ! " With his cane uplifted to strike, the 
master angrily exclaimed, "You lyin' nigger, I'll show you," 
when Chad cried out, "'Stop, Marsa John! 't ain't fair, 
't ain't fair.' MVhy ain't it fair? ' says he. ' 'Cause,' says I, 
' you didn't say " Shoo ! " to de goose what was on de table.' " 
And the next day " Marsa John " told Chad he could have 
Henny for his wife. 

Upon the belated arrival of the Colonel, he told the Major, 
with evident feeling in his voice, of all Chad's loyalty to the 
house of Carter. " Do you know. Major, that when I was a 
prisoner at City Point that darky tramped a hundred miles 
through the coast swamps to reach me, crossed both lines 
twice, hung around for three months for his chance, and has 
carried in his leg ever since the ball intended for me the 
night I escaped in his clothes, and he was shot in mine. I 
tell you, suh, the color of a man's skin don't make much 
diffe'ence sometimes. Chad was bawn a gentleman, and 
he'll never get over it." 

Some of the Colonel's unique traits are illustrated in his 
buying roses for his Aunt Nancy, when she was considerately 
and secretly paying his grocery bills ; in his drawing her a 
note of hand to relieve his sense of indebtedness and protect 
her against personal loss, in which he promises to pay on 
demand six hundred dollars, with interest at six per cent, 
" payable as soon as possible " ; in his swift challenge of old 
Klutchem, the broker, for alluding to the Colonel's railroad 



I04 Provincial Types in the South 

securities as not worth a yellow dog ; in his sudden drawing 
of his will and bequeathing to his aunt, " Ann Carter, spin- 
ster," twenty-five thousand shares of '* Cartersville and War- 
rentown Air Line Railroad" stock, — a railroad that was as 
yet only on paper and in the air ; and in his cool attempt, 
as preparation for the duel, to snuff, at forty yards, a candle 
held by the confident Chad. 

The prospective duel brought from Virginia, as a second 
for the Colonel, Major Tom Yancey of the Confederate 
army, whose personal appearance is described as that of " a 
short, oily-skinned, perpetually perspiring man of forty, with 
a decollete collar, a double-breasted waistcoat with glass 
buttons, and skin-tight light trousers held down to a pair of 
high-heeled boots by leather straps. The space between 
his waistband and his waistcoat was made good by 
certain puckerings of his shirt, anxious to escape the thral- 
dom of his suspenders." Unfortunately, the Colonel's 
challenge had failed to reach Mr. Klutchem, through lack 
of postage ; and it was then diplomatically suggested by 
Fitzpatrick that the language used by the satirical Mr. 
Klutchem was really not insulting. Whereupon this dialogue 
ensued: "Did he call you a yaller dog?" said Yancey. 
" No." " Call anybody connected with you a yaller dog ? " 
" Can't say that he did." " Call yo' railroad a yaller dog? " 
" No, don't think so," said the Colonel, now thoroughly 
confused and adrift. Yancey consulted with " Jedge " Ker- 
foot, his companion from the " district co'te of Fairfax 
County," and said gravely : " Unless some mo' direct insult 
is stated, Colonel, we must agree with yo' friend, Mr. Fitz- 
patrick, and consider yo' action hasty. Now, if you had 
pressed the gemman, and he had called j'^« a yaller dog or 
a liar, somethin' might be done. Why didn't you press 



"Colonel Carter of Cartersville " 105 

him? " "I did, suh. I told him his statements were false 
and his manners vulgar." "And he did not talk back?" 
" No, suh ; on'y laughed." " Sneeringly, and in a way that 
sounded hke ' Yo're another '? " The Colonel had to con- 
fess to the belligerent Yancey that he could not remember 
that it was. And " Jedge " Kerfoot formulated the general 
verdict : " The prisoner, Klutchem, is discharged with a 
reprimand, and the plaintiff, Caarter, leaves the co'te-room 
without a stain on his cha'acter. The co'te will now take a 
recess." And the " Jedge," the Major, and Fitzpatrick dis- 
appeared into an underground apartment where they slaked 
a true Southern thirst. However, for the poor Colonel, 
whose sense of what a gentleman should be was keen, it was 
now the only proper thing to call with Mr. Fitzpatrick upon 
Mr. Klutchem and make a formal apology for attempting to 
send a challenge on insufficient grounds for action. 

When at last, on the unexpected sale of his coal land to 
the English syndicate, the Colonel actually became as rich 
in fact as he had been in hopes and the assurance of his 
optimistic nature, he was the same man in bearing, manner, 
and speech as he had been in his impecunious days in 
Bedford Place ; the same in grateful generosity as he 
showed the faithful Chad the Englishman's check and told 
his old servant there was no more hard work for him ; and 
the same in delightful chivalry as he rose at dinner and 
proposed the toast to Miss Nancy, " Fill yo' glasses, gentle- 
men, and drink to the health of that greatest of all blessings, 
— a true Southern lady ! " Surely Cartersville lies in the 
" garden spot " of Virginia and the Colonel will always find 
an " outlet " for it in the interest of American readers. 



CHAPTER VIII 

" UNCLE REMUS : HIS SONGS AND HIS SAYINGS ; " 
"MINGO, AND OTHER SKETCHES IN BLACK AND 
WHITE" BY JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS 

During his earlier years as one of the editorial writers 
on the Atlanta Constitution Mr. Harris occasionally enter- 
tained the other members of the staff with his stories of 
plantation life ; and it occurred to the editor of the paper 
that, if these could be put into literary form and published 
in the Coiistitution, they would make a popular journalistic 
feature. After much persuasion Mr. Harris wrote out some 
of the memories of his boyhood days in Putnam County, 
Georgia, and put them into the mouth of an old negro 
named "Uncle Remus." These sketches attracted wide 
interest, and in 1880 there was published in book form " Uncle 
Remus : His Songs and His Sayings," — a book that dis- 
closed to the world a unique character in fiction, and fixed 
the fame of the author not only in this country but also in 
England. "Uncle Remus" as a type of his race presents 
in Mr. Harris's work some of the more unusual phases of 
the negro character. As the author in his introduction to 
the book modestly remarks, "If the language of Uncle 
Remus fails to give vivid hints of the really poetic imagina- 
tion of the negro ; if it fails to embody the quaint and 
hom.ely humor which was his most prominent characteristic ; 
if it does not suggest a certain picturesque sensitiveness, 
a curious exaltation of mind and temperament not to be 

106 




"Brer Rabbit ain't see no peace w'atsuraever." 

(See page 63.) 
From Uncle Remus. Copyright 1880, 1895, by D. Appleton atid Company 



I 



" Uncle Remus " 107 

defined by words, — then I have reproduced the form of the 
dialect merely, and not the essence, and my attempt may 
be accounted a failure." One certainly gets, in reading, 
the qualities Mr. Harris hopes to give, and also others, 
— such as the quaint superstitions, the peculiarly close 
sympathy with the weaker of the lower animals, which 
doubtless grew out of the negro's own dependent condition, 
and his prejudices connected with caste and pride of family. 
The little boy to whom Uncle Remus tells his legends is a 
product of the reconstruction that has quietly been going 
on in the South since the Civil War, while Uncle Remus 
himself is a surviving result of that social and political 
system which the war destroyed or greatly modified. And 
he is a survivor that has only pleasant memories of the time 
'' befo' the wah." 

It is significant to notice that in all the contests of subtlety 
and wit between " Brer Rabbit " on the one hand, and the 
bear, the wolf, and the fox on the other, the rabbit is almost 
uniformly successful, — the hero is the weakest and most 
harmless of animals. To use the words of Mr. Harris, " It is 
not virtue that triumphs, but helplessness ; it is not malice, 
but mischievousness." In other words, the negro's concep- 
tion of " Brer Rabbit " seems to be a sort of allegory in 
which are reflected in a measure the relations of the black 
man to the dominant white race. 

" Miss Sally," in search of her seven-year-old little boy, 
looked one evening through the window of Uncle Remus's 
cabin and saw the child's head resting against the old man's 
arm. His face was turned in intense interest up to the rough, 
weather-beaten face of Uncle Remus, who was telling him 
of the various wiles of Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox in their 
ceaseless contests with each other. They had exchanged 



io8 Provincial Types in the South 

invitations to dinner, and Brer Rabbit in accepting the fox's 
invitation was approaching the latter's home when he heard 
groaning within. On opening the door Brer Rabbit found 
Brer Fox sitting up in a rocking-chair all wrapped up in 
flannel and looking " mighty weak." But he saw no dinner, 
— only a dish-pan, and close beside it a carving-knife. Brer 
Rabbit remarked that all signs pointed to chicken for dinner ; 
and when Brer Fox assented, Brer Rabbit pulled his mus- 
tache and asked whether the fox had any calamus root. "I 
done got so now dat I can't eat no chicken' ceppin' she's 
seasoned up wid calamus root." And thereupon Brer Rab- 
bit leaped out of the door and watched among the bushes 
for Brer Fox, who soon crept out of the house with his in- 
valid's disguise gone and was preparing to close in on his 
reluctant guest. Suddenly Brer Rabbit cried out that he 
would just lay the fox's calamus root on a neighboring stump,' 
and that the fox ought to get it while it was fresh, and then 
went leaping homeward. Uncle Remus's final comment 
was : " En Brer Fox ain't never kotch 'im yit. En wat's mo', 
honey, he ain't gwineter." 

The fox's most successful stratagem with Brer Rabbit was 
the device of the " Tar- Baby," but even that was not entirely 
successful, — at least Uncle Remus leaves the little boy and 
the rest of us in doubt as to the final issue. Soon after the 
calamus root episode Brer Fox fixed up with tar and tur- 
pentine " a contrapshun " which he called a Tar- Baby. Put- 
ting it in the road, Brer Fox retired to the bushes to watch the 
effects. Soon there came pacing down the road Brer Rab- 
bit — he came " hppity-clippity, chppity-hppity — dez ez 
sassy ez a jay-bird." Suddenly seeing the Tar- Baby, Brer 
Rabbit lifted himself on his " behime legs " in curious aston- 
ishment. " ' Mawnin ! ' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee -^ ' nice wed- 



" Uncle Remus " 109 

der dis mawnin',' sezee. Tar-Baby ain't sayin' nothin', en 
Brer Fox, he lay low. ' How duz yo' sym'tums seem ter 
segashuate?' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee." But the Tar-Baby 
still " ain't sayin' nothin'," and Brer Rabbit offers to speak 
louder, if this strange little being is deaf. Growing indig- 
nant, the rabbit finally comes to the conclusion that the 
Tar-Baby is " stuck up " and threatens her : " Ef you don't 
take off dat hat en tell me howdy, I'm gwineter bus' you wide 
open." At last, all patience exhausted by repeated ques- 
tionings, Brer Rabbit draws back and strikes the Tar-Baby 
with his fist. " Right dar's whaa he broke his merlasses 
jug." His fist clung to the Tar- Baby, and he couldn't pull 
it loose. " Ef you don't lemme loose, I'll knock you again," 
said Brer Rabbit, and with that he struck the Tar-Baby 
with his other hand, and that also stuck. 

" Tu'n me loose, fo' I kick de nat'al stuffin' outen you," 
said the rabbit ; but the Tar-Baby still "ain't sayin' nothin'," 
but just held on, and Brer Rabbit lost also the use of both 
his feet. " Den Brer Rabbit squall out dat ef de Tar-Baby 
don't tu'n 'im loose he butt 'er crank-sided. En den he 
butted, en his head got stuck." Whereupon Brer Fox, who 
has been lying low, saunters forth looking as innocent as 
" one er yo' mammy's mockin'-birds," and remarks gen- 
ially : " Howdy, Brer Rabbit. You look sorter stuck up 
dis mawnin'." And then Brer Fox rolled on the ground and 
laughed and laughed, till he could laugh no more. " I speck 
you'll take dinner wid me dis time, Brer Rabbit. I done 
laid in some calamus root, en I ain't gwineter take no 
skuse," said the hilarious fox. But whether the fox ate the 
rabbit or not. Uncle Remus refused to tell the little boy, — 
** Dat's all de fur de tale goes ; " and this autocratic ending 
was the signal for the Httle boy to "run 'long." 



no Provincial Types in the South 

In half-soling one of his shoes Uncle Remus was much 
irritated by the little boy's persistent handling of his awls and 
hammers and knives; and this furnished the old negro a 
text for his tale about "The Awful Fate of Mr. Wolf." 
" Folks w'at's allers pesterin' people, en bodderin' 'longer 
dat w'at ain't dern, don't never come ter no good eend." 
And then the old darky proceeded to tell the story of the 
alliance of Brer Wolf with Brer Fox against Brer Rabbit, 
and how he " got kotch up wid — en he got kotch up wid 
monstus bad." The Httle boy's critical attitude of mind 
toward the past and present history of Brer Wolf proved too 
much for Uncle Remus's complacent egotism as a story- 
teller who could not be doubted, and he threateningly re- 
minded the httle fellow that his mother's voice would soon 
be calling him, and that his father might possibly bring up 
the rear "wid dat ar strop w'at I made fer 'im." The child 
laughingly shook his fist in the simple and serious face of the 
venerable old man, and then relapsed into an attitude of 
expectant interest. 

It seems, according to Uncle Remus's narrative, that the 
wolf had torn down a straw house the rabbit had built, and 
also a house made of pine tops and one of bark, — and each 
time a child of Brer Rabbit's had been lost. Finally, Brer 
Rabbit built himself a house of plank, with rock foundations, 
and could then live in some sense of security. 

One day, with the dogs hard after him, Brer Wolf took 
refuge in Brer Rabbit's house, and begged the latter for 
some place to hide in. The rabbit told him to get into a 
big chest that stood in the room, and when the wolf was 
inside and the hasp that held the cover down had been 
shoved into place. Brer Rabbit, in his exultation at having 
Mr. Wolf securely in his power, " went ter de lookin'-glass, 



'*■' Uncle Remus " iii 

he did, en wink at hisse'f, en den he draw'd de rockin'- 
cheer in front er de fier, he did, and tuck a big chaw ter- 
barker." 

Soon from the big chest came the anxious voice of Brer 
Wolf inquiring about the dogs, and Brer Rabbit informed 
him consoHngly that he thought he had just heard one of 
them smelHng round the chimney corner. Then Brer Rab- 
bit filled a kettle with water and put it on the fire. "I'm 
fixin' ter make you a nice cup er tea, Brer Wolf." Next he 
proceeded to bore some holes in the cover of the big chest, 
to give, as he said, some chance to the wolf to get breath. 
Then Brer Rabbit increased the fire, with the purpose, as he 
told the wolf, of keeping him from getting cold. Brer 
Wolf, in his anxious curiosity to know what was going on, 
next inquired what Brer Rabbit was then engaged in. " I'm 
a tellin' my chilluns/' calmly returned the rabbit, " w'at a 
nice man you is. Brer Wolf." " En de chilluns," Uncle 
Remus smihngly continued, " dey had ter put der ban's on 
der moufs fer ter keep fum laffin'." 

Then Brer Rabbit took the kettle and began to pour the 
boiling water through the holes in the cover of the chest, 
and this dialogue ensued : "W'at dat I feel. Brer Rabbit?" 
"You feels de fleas a bitin', Brer Wolf." " Dey er bitin' 
mighty hard. Brer Rabbit." " Tu'n over on de udder side, 
Brer Wolf." " W'at dat I feel now, Brer Rabbit? " "Still 
you feels de fleas, Brer Wolf." " Dey er eatin' me up. 
Brer Rabbit," — and these were the last words of Mr. Wolf, 
" kase de scaldin' water done de bizness." And Uncle 
Remus told the little boy, with a confirmatory touch of 
realism, that if he should go to Brer Rabbit's house he 
might still find Brer Wolf's hide " hangin' in de back po'ch, 
en all bekase he wuz so bizzy wid udder fo'kses doin's." 



112 Provincial Types in the South 

In " A Story of the War," largely told in the dialect of 
Uncle Remus, and also in his shrewd and humorous " Say- 
ings," contained in the same volume, various aspects of the 
negro's pecuHar character and mental habits are brought 
out with a quiet but telling art that readers have come to 
expect in Mr. Harris's writings. 

Mr. Howells's suggestion that too exclusive a stress has 
been laid upon Mr. Harris's authentic portrayal of negro 
character, to the neglect of his sketches of Southern white 
types, brings to mind his story called " At Teague Poteet's," 
which is included in the volume entitled " Mingo, and 
Other Sketches in Black and White." 

High up on Hog Mountain and overlooking Gullettsville, 
lay the fifty-acre farm of Teague Poteet, a Georgia 
" cracker " ; and at the close of the Civil War, little Sis 
Poteet, his daughter, had grown old enough to need an 
education. But when her father suggested that it was time 
for her to become a lady by getting an education down in 
Gullettsville, Sis objected in very vigorous terms : " Pap, do 
you reckon I'm fool enough to traipse down to Gullettsville 
an' mix with them people, wearin' cloze like these? Do you 
reckon Fm fool enough to make myself the laughin' -stock 
for them folks?" And Teague was quick to see the point 
so emphatically made by his self-willed daughter. He took 
down his rifle, whistled up his dogs, and tramped skyward 
for game. Passing out through his horse-lot, he came acci- 
dentally upon the cap and worm of a whisky still, and 
turning the apparatus over with his foot, he remarked with a 
chuckle : " I'll thes about take you an' set up a calico 
factory. I'll heat you up an' make you spin silk an' split it 
into ribbens." And so whisky, in the strange movement 
of civilization, was to educate Sis Poteet. 



" Uncle Remus'* 113 

Sis, having an unusual brightness of mind and a pecuhar 
beauty of face and figure, became a great favorite at the 
academy in Gullettsville, and in time became as thoroughly 
educated as that somewhat limited institution could be ex- 
pected to make her, for she was ambitious and improved 
her opportunities to the utmost. She rode from the Moun- 
tain to the Valley and from the Valley to the Mountain " in 
profound ignorance of the daily sensation she created among 
the young men of Gullettsville," to whom her beauty and 
unconscious grace were a sort of revelation. It was only 
when she met PhiHp Woodward, — a United States deputy 
marshal sent to arrange for a successful raid upon the moon- 
shiners of Hog Mountain, who included among their num- 
ber her own father, — that Sis began to know the attractions 
of a personal magnetism that belonged to a handsome, quick- 
witted, and adventurous young man familiar with the outside 
world. Woodward was staying in Gullettsville ostensibly to 
look up the title of a land- lot somewhere in the vicinity of 
Hog Mountain, which was practically all that remained of 
an inheritance swept away by the war. There was a tradi- 
tion or rumor that the land-lot covered a vein of gold, and 
the desire to investigate this was a part of the young man's 
business, though strictly subordinate to his function as a 
deputy sheriff. This interest in the possibilities of his land- 
lot used to take young Woodward back and forth between 
Gullettsville and Hog Mountain, and what so natural in that 
informal region but that he should now and then meet Sis 
Poteet on her way to school. Sis was a surprise to him, in 
that region of social destitution, and her intelligence and 
wild beauty in some way won his heart. And here was a 
United States deputy sheriff paid to hunt down the moon- 
shiners, and at the same time hopelessly in love with a 
I 



114 Provincial Types in the South 

daughter of one of them ! In this clash between the gov- 
ernment and his heart, all he could do was to resign, but 
his resignation was not accepted. 

In his advances as a wooer of Sis Poteet, Woodward soon 
found it necessary to drop all airs of patronage, — here was 
a woman of independent mind, frankness, and splendid free- 
dom of hfe, — as the scholarly principal of the academy in 
GuUettsville once said, she was "superior to her books." 
In his despairing efforts to win her, he finally told her that 
he had failed to hunt up blockade whisky, that he had 
failed in his search for gold, and that even his resignation 
was a failure. At such disclosures Sis started up in a rage 
crying, " Oh, you mean, sneaking wretch ! " and passed 
swiftly through the kitchen, seized a horn hanging on the 
wall, and ran out into the darkness. Suddenly were heard the 
notes of a horn, — short, sharp, and strenuous, — thrice 
repeated, and then a httle later repeated three times again. 
And all the dwellers on Hog Mountain knew what it meant, 
— it was the notification that the moonshiners would soon 
be raided by the revenue men. 

At the sound of the horn Teague Poteet, who owned two 
stills himself, was looking after some '^doubhngs"; but all 
he did was to pause and listen and smile. Then he re- 
marked, " Sis talks right out in meetin' ; " and added by 
way of explanation that the message of the horn was to the 
effect that the raiders would pass his own door. "An' I 
reckon in reason I oughter be home when they go past. 
They useter be a kinder coolness betweenst me an' them 
revenue fellers." In truth, the news of an approaching raid 
was like the taste of illicit whisky to these resolute men, — it 
had a sort of exhilarating effect, and meant perhaps a week of 
diversion in avoiding and fighting the government posse. 



" Uncle Remus " 115 

"Come, Tip," said Teague, " yess shet up shop." " Ef 
Sis ain't a caution," he said, a httle later, as he moved about, 
putting things to rights. " Ef Sis ain't a caution, you kin 
shoot me. They hain't no mo' teUin' wher' Sis picked up 
'bout thish 'ere raid than nothin' in the worl'. Dang me 
ef I don't b'heve the gal's glad when a raid's a-comin'. 
Wi' Sis, hit's moYtment, movement, day in an' day out. 
They hain't nobody knows that gal less'n it's me. She 
knows how to keep things a-gwine." 

And then the proud father indulged in some domestic 
reminiscence. "Sometimes she runs an' meets me, an' 
says, se' she : ' Pap, mammy's in the dumps ; yess you an' 
me make out we er quollin'. Hit'll sorter stir 'er up ' ; an' 
then Sis, she'll light in, an' by the time we git in the house, 
she's a-scoldin' an' a-sassin' an' I'm a-cussin', an' airter 
awhile hit gits so hot an' natchul-hke that I thes has ter drag 
Sis out behin' the chimbly and buss 'er to make certain an' 
shore that she ain't accidentually flew off the han'le. Bless 
your soul an' body ! she's a caution ! " 

To the inquiry of Uncle Jake as to what Puss Poteet, the 
mother, was doing meanwhile, Teague replied with a laugh : 
" Oh, Puss ! Puss, she thes sets thar a-chawin' away at 'er 
snuff, an' a-knittin' away at 'er socks tell she thinks I'm 
a-pushin' Sis too clost, an' then she blazes out an' blows me 
up. Airter that," Teague continued, "things gits more 
homelike. Ef 't wa'n't fer me an' Sis, I reckon Puss 'ud 
teetotally fret 'erself away." In wise comment Uncle Jake 
added, as he took another dram : " St. Paul — St. Paul 
says ther' er divers an' many wimmin, an' I reckon he 
know'd. Ther' er some you kin fret an' some you can't. 
Ther's my ole *oman; more espeshually she's one you 
can't." 



ii6 Provincial Types in the South 

On the advice of Teagiie Poteet the ex-deputy, Wood- 
ward, who was spending the night at Poteet's, joined the 
band of moonshiners that were starting out to defy the 
sheriffs posse. He carried himself well and was protected 
from a quarrel by Teague himself. The posse was misled 
by the manufactured report of a Jewish peddler that Teague 
Poteet had been arrested and taken to Atlanta by a man 
named Woodward, and the posse hastened toward that city 
to share in the honor of the capture. On their way down 
the mountain one of their number recklessly shot a fifteen- 
year-old boy who was out squirrel-hunting, and this so 
enraged the mountaineers that when Woodward returned 
to Poteet's he was strongly advised to leave the region at 
once. 

The effect on Sis of Woodward's sudden departure was 
a mystery to her father. She became variable in her moods, 
sometimes as gay as the birds in the trees, and sometimes 
taciturn and apparently depressed. As Teague described 
it, " One minnit hit's Sis, an' the nex' hit's some un else." 
He talked with his wife Puss about it, but got little conso- 
lation, for she felt that she was somewhat neglected in the 
attention given her attractive daughter. " It's Sis, Sis, Sis, 
all the time, an' eternally. Ef the calfs fat, the ole cow 
ain't got much choice betwixt the quogmire an' the tan-vat." 

Sis once irrelevantly asked her father if he liked Mr. 
Woodward, and his reply had no uncertain sound : " Well, 
I tell you what, he had mighty takin' ways. Look in his 
eye, an' you wouldn't see no muddy water -, an' he had grit. 
They hain't no two ways about that." All of his talks with 
Sis finally swung round to the subject of Woodward, and 
Teague began vaguely to suspect that possibly Woodward 
had wronged her. He went to Atlanta with a revolver in 



" Uncle Remus '* 117 

his pocket, bent on finding out from Woodward himself the 
true condition of things. Woodward accidentally met him, 
took him to his room, and asked him in an embarrassed 
way if he thought his daughter would be willing to marry 
him. Whereupon, vastly relieved, the old mountaineer 
rephed : " Lem me tell you the honest truth, Cap," placing 
his hand kindly on the young man's shoulder ; " I might 
'low she would, an' I might 'low she wouldn't ; but I'm 
erbleege to tell you that I dunno nothin' 'bout that gal no 
more 'n ef I hadn't a-never seed 'er. Wimmin is mighty 
kuse." Some of Sis's actions were inexplicable, but finally 
she responded with all the strength of her nature to the 
manly love of Woodward. He was strongly in favor of a 
quiet wedding, but Teague had different views. "Why, 
good Lord, Cap ! " he exclaimed, "what 'ud the boys say? 
Poteet's gal married an' no stools [invitations] give out ! 
No, siree ! Not much. We hain't that stripe up here, 
Cap. We hain't got no quality ways, but we allers puts 
on the pot when comp'ny comes. Me an' Sis an' Puss 
hain't had many weddin's 'mongst us, an' we're thes a-gwine 
to try an' put the bes' foot foremos'." When Hog Mountain 
heard the news, sent by special messenger with little pink 
missives written by Sis, it was as proud as Teague himself. 

Certainly Sis and Puss and Teague, Mrs. Hightower and 
the bibulous Uncle Jake Norris, are a "peculiar people," but 
they have found in Mr. Harris an author who appreciates 
their qualities, and sees their deficiencies in a genial, hu- 
morous light. 



CHAPTER IX 

"THE GRANDISSIMES " BY GEORGE W. CABLE 

Mr. Cable found in the influence of slavery and the caste 
spirit upon Creole life in New Orleans, at the opening of the 
last century, a virgin field that has yielded to American 
fiction a highly artistic and captivating book in " The Gran- 
dissimes." Notwithstanding a certain resentment on the 
part of the Creoles of the South against Mr. Cable's some- 
times satirical but always sympathetic portrayal of their race, 
they should count themselves fortunate in having so skillful 
an artist and so fair a man to perpetuate in exquisite liter- 
ary form such charming qualities as are found in types like 
Aurore and Clotilde and Honore Grandissime ; while Raoul 
Innerarity, Palmyre Philosophe, Clemence, and Agricola, 
though less distinctly individualized perhaps, are yet unique 
additions to our understanding of New Orleans Hfe at the 
time of the French cession of Louisiana. 

It was at the bal masque, given for charity, in the Theatre 
St. Philippe of New Orleans in the fall of 1803 that the beau- 
tiful Aurore Nancanou suddenly unmasked herself to Honore 
Grandissime, on condition that before the following night 
he should pay into the hands of the managers two hundred 
and fifty dollars for sweet charity's sake. And Honore was 
more than repaid, although he saw only a stranger, — the 
last of the great Creole family of De Grapion, the long-time 

118 



" The Grandissimes " 119 

rivals to the Grandissimes. She was a young widow, hving 
a secluded Hfe of poverty in New Orleans with her daughter 
Clotilde, and he was the ablest and most progressive Creole 
in the famous family of the Grandissimes. 

Aurore Nancanou and her daughter Hved at No. 19 rue 
Bienville, in the right-hand half of a single-story, low-roofed 
tenement, washed with yellow ocher. The bedchamber of 
the cook was the kitchen and her bed the floor. The only 
other protector of the house was a hound, the aim of whose 
life was to get thrust out of the ladies' apartments every fif- 
teen minutes. They were living in evident poverty, though 
neatness, order, and excellence were prevalent quahties in 
all the details of the interior. The furniture was old-fashioned, 
rich, French, and imported ; the carpets, though not new, 
were not cheap ; bits of crystal and silver, here and there, 
were as bright as they were antiquated ; and the brasswork 
was brilliantly burnished. Their poverty was in a measure 
self-inflicted. Aurore's husband, in gambling with Agricola 
Fusilier, uncle of Honore Grandissime, had staked and lost 
his whole plantation, including the slaves, and having accused 
Agricola of cheating and having been challenged to a duel, 
he feU dead at the first fire of Agricola's pistol. Agricola 
offered to restore the whole estate, slaves and all, if only the 
widow, Aurore, would sign a document to the effect that she 
believed the stakes had been fairly won. But her Creole 
pride refused, — that Creole pride of which Dr. Keene, 
Aurore's American physician, significantly said, as if making 
a diagnosis : " Show me any Creole, or any number of 
Creoles, in any sort of contest, and right down at the 
foundation of it ah, I wiH find you this same preposterous, 
apathetic, fantastic, suicidal pride. It is as lethargic and 
ferocious as an alligator." 



I20 Provincial Types in the South 

In the six months that Aurore and Clotilde had been 
living in their present abode it was not surprising that their 
neighbors had not been able to decide which was the fairer. 
" If some young enthusiast compares the daughter — in her 
eighteenth year — to a bursting blush rosebud full of promise, 
some older one immediately retorts that the other — in her 
thirty-fifth — is the red, red, full-blown, fauldess joy of the 
garden. If one says the maiden has the dew of youth, — 
' But ! ' cry two or three mothers in a breath, ' that other 
one, child, will never grow old. With her it will always be 
morning. That woman is going to last forever ; ha-a-a-a ! — 
even longer ! ' " 

The reception of callers on Monday was always in Creole 
eyes an unfortunate event, to be guarded against only by 
smearing the front walk or " the banquette " with Venetian 
red. And this particular Monday the ominous caller on 
mother and daughter proved to be an errand-boy, who 
slipped a missive under the door. It read as follows : — 

"New Orleans, 20 Feb're, 1804. 

" Madame Nancanou : I muss oblige to ass you for rent 
of that house whare you living, it is at number 19 Bienville 
street whare I do not received thos rent from you not since 
tree mons and I demand you this is mabe thirteen time. 
And I give to you notice of 19 das writen in Anglish as the 
new law requi. That witch the law make necessare only 
for 15 das, and when you not pay me those rent in 19 das 
till the tense of Marh I will rekes you to move out. That 
witch make me to be very sorry. I have the honor to 
remain, Madam, 

" Your humble servant, 

" H. Grandissime, 

''per Z. F." 



" The Grandisslmes " I2i 

The signature was supposedly that of the man to whom 
Aurore had laughingly unmasked at the ball for two hundred 
and fifty dollars to be paid to charity, but it was in reality 
that of his quadroon brother, the rentier, f. m. c. (free man 
of color). So that Aurore's tearful scorn on reading the 
letter was misdirected, though just as intense. " H. Gran- 
dissime ! Loog ad 'im ! " She held the letter out before 
her as if she were Hfting something alive by the back of the 
neck, and to strengthen her indignation she used the hated 
English language enjoined by the new courts. ^' Loog ad 
'im ! dat ridge gen'leman oo give so mudge money to de 
'ozpill ! " " Bud, inaman,^' suggested her daughter appeas- 
ingly, ^' ee do nod know 'ow we is poor." "Ah ! " retorted 
Aurore, ^^par example ! Non ? Ee thingue we is ridge, 
eh? Ligue his oncle, eh? Ee thing so, too, eh?" She 
cast upon her daughter the withering look she intended for 
Agricola Fusiher, — the Grandissime who shot her husband 
in the duel and kept their estate, — and added scornfully, 
"You wan' to tague the pard of dose Grandissime?'" 
Clotilde, with a look of agony on her face, replied : " No, 
bud a man wad godd some 'ouses to rend, muz ee nod 
boun' to ged 'is rend? " Whereupon the mother ironically 
exclaimed : " Boun' to ged — ah ! yez ee muz do 'is possible 
to ged 'is rend. Oh ! certain/^*?. Ee is ridge, bud ee need 
a lill money, bad, bad. Fo' w'at?" And then Aurore 
rose to her feet excitedly and made a show of unfastening 
her dress for her daughter to carry off to satisfy the usurious 
demands of the Grandissimes. But the daughter's sudden 
tears brought the repentant mother to her knees ; she drew 
her child's head into her bosom, and wept afresh. Then 
she told her daughter that she was going directly to Honore 
Czrandissime to demand justice ; but instead she went 



122 Provincial Types in the South 

to consult Palmyre Philosophe, the worker of voudou 
charms. 

The room which Aurora — to use Mr. Cable's preferred 
spelling — entered had furniture of a rude, heavy pattern, 
Creole-made ; the lofty bedstead was spread and hung with 
a blue stuff showing through a web of white needlework. 
*'The brazen feet of the chairs were brightly burnished, as 
were the brass mountings of the bedstead and the brass 
globes on the cold andirons. Curtains of blue and white 
hung at the single window. The floor, from habitual 
scrubbing with the common weed which politeness has to 
call Helejiium autunmale, was stained a bright clean yellow. 
On it were here and there, in places, white mats woven of 
bleached palmetto leaf." There was besides a singular bit 
of fantastic carving, — a small table of dark mahogany 
supported on the upward-writhing images of three scaly 
serpents. 

A dwarf Congo woman, black as soot, ushered in Aurora, 
who found Palmyre sitting beside this table. Though it 
was February, Palmyre was dressed in white. " That barbaric 
beauty which had begun to bud twenty years before was 
now in perfect bloom. The united grace and pride of her 
movement was inspiring, but — what shall we say ? — feline ? 
It was a femininity without humanity, — something that 
made her, with all her superbness, a creature that one would 
want to find chained." These two women had been chil- 
dren together on the De Grapion plantation, and their 
greeting was joyously cordial as they advanced toward each 
other, laughing and talking in their old-time French. 

Aurora's pretended purpose in consulting the voudou 
worker of charms was to discover a means of getting her 
rent money ; but Palmyre was quick to discover that the 



" The Grandissimes " 123 

fluttering little widow was really in love and wanted reas- 
surance that her heart's desire might sometime be realized. 
The black dwarf brought in a little pound-cake and cordial, 
a tumbler half filled with the sirop naturelle of the cane 
sugar, and a small piece of candle of the kind made from 
the fragrant green wax of the candleberry myrtle. " These 
were set upon the small table, the bit of candle standing, 
lighted, in the tumbler of sirup, the cake on a plate, the 
cordial in a wine-glass." As Palmyre closed out all day- 
light from the room and received the offering of silver that 
" averted guillons (interferences of outside imps) " Aurora 
" went down upon her knees with her gaze fixed on the 
candle's flame, and silently called on Assonquer (the imp 
of good fortune) to cast his snare in her behalf around the 
mind and heart of — she knew not whom." When the 
flame rose clear and long it was a sign that the imp was 
on her side, but when it sputtered Aurora trembled. The 
end of the charred wick suddenly curled down and twisted 
away from the devotee, and her hope died down with it ; 
but the tall figure of Palmyre intervened, the flame brightene'd 
into a cone, and once more the wick turned down, — but 
fortunately this time in the direction of Aurora. It finally 
fell through the exhausted wax and went out in the sirup. 
This was all; and then the charm worker handed Aurora 
some basil to hold between her lips as she walked home- 
ward. To the departing and agitated little widow Palmyre 
Philosophe ominously exclaimed : " These things that you 
want, Momselle Aurore, are easy to bring. You have no 
charms working against you. But, oh ! I wish to God I 
could work the curse /want to work ! " Her blazing eyes, 
her heaving bosom, and her clenched hand lifted upward, 
reenforced her vengeful vow : " I would give this right hand 



124 Provincial Types in the South 

off at the wrist to catch Agricola FusiHer where I could work 
him a curse ! But I shall ; I shall some day be revenged ! " 
The most dehghtfully inconsequential and free-hearted 
character in the book is Raoul Innerarity, cousin of Honore 
Grandissime, who suddenly appeared in the drug store of 
Joseph Frowenfeld, the immigrant, where various articles 
were wont to be left for sale. Behind him came a little 
black boy carrying a large rectangular package. Raoul is 
described as "a young, auburn- curled, blue-eyed man, 
whose adolescent buoyancy, as much as his delicate, silver- 
buckled feet and clothes of perfect fit, pronounced him 
all-pure Creole." Advancing like a schoolboy coming in 
after recess, Raoul announced to Mr. Frowenfeld : " I 'ave 
somet'ing beauteeful to place into yo' window." Tearing 
away the wrappings, he disclosed a painting, which he 
balanced at arm's length while he admired, and watched 
the effect on the proprietor of the pharmacy. Frowenfeld 
gazed long and silently, as if in dumb amazement, and then 
quietly asked: ''What is it?" "Louisiana rif-using to 
hanter de h-Union ! " repUed the ecstatic Creole. Joseph 
silently wondered at Louisiana's anatomy, and then remarked 
that the subject was allegorical. '' Allegoricon? No, sir! 
Allegoricon never saw that pigshoe. If you insist to know 
who make dat pigshoe — de hartis' stan' bif-ore you ! " 
And Raoul, the proud, continued : " 'Tis de work of me, 
Raoul Innerarity, cousin to de distingwish Honore Grandis- 
sime. I swear to you, sir, on stack of Bible' as 'igh as yo' 
head ! " When asked if he wanted the picture put into the 
window on sale, Raoul hesitatingly replied : " 'Sieur Frowen- 
fel', I think it is a foohshness to be too proud, eh? I want 
you to say, ' My frien', 'Sieur Innerarity, never care to sell 
anything; 'tis for egshibbyshun ; ' mats — when somebody 



" The Grandissimes " 125 

look at it,, so," Raoul cast upon his work a look of languish- 
ing covetousness, " You say, ^foudre tonnere ! what de dev' ! 
— I take dat ris-pon-sibble-ty — you can have her for two 
hun'red fifty dollah ! ' Better not be too proud, eh, 'Sieur 
Frowenfel' ?" 

Raoul then proceeded to show how thoroughly the artistic 
ideal had gotten hold of him by explaining that only a week 
before he was making out bills of lading for his cousin 
Honore, " an' now I ham a hartis' ! So soon I foun' dat, I 
say, ' Cousin Honor^ ... I never goin' to do anoder lick 
o' work so long I live ; adieu.' " As an artist M. Raoul 
Innerarity was a crude specimen of laughable Creole egotism, 
but as a drug clerk for Mr. Joseph Frowenfeld, — a student 
of the community, — the irrepressible Creole was " a key, a 
lamp, a lexicon, a microscope, a tabulated statement, a book 
of heraldry, a city directory, a glass of wine, a Book of 
Days, a pair of wings, a comic almanac, a diving bell, a 
Creole Veritas ^ 

Mr. Joseph Frowenfeld's first call upon Aurora and 
Clotilde Nancanou discloses his own rational and equitable 
nature, while it serves to bring out as by a foil the deliciously 
amiable and scintillating qualities of the Creole mother and 
daughter, whom Mr. Cable has painted with so deft and 
loving a touch. The story of " Bras-Coupe," told simultane- 
ously by Honore Grandissime and Raoul Innerarity, is a 
series of pictures drawn in blood that present with startling 
effect the almost incredible horrors inherent in the savagery 
of slavery. It helps to account for the present uncanny 
and dangerous characteristics of Palmyre Philosophe, the 
weaver of voudou charms, and suggests causes that later may 
lead to the undoing of that pompous embodiment of unre- 
lenting caste spirit, Agricola Fusilier. 



126 Provincial Types in the South 

The sensational end of Frowenfeld's effort to help the 
sick Dr. Keene, by caring for the wounded Palmyre, re- 
sulted in his finding, dramatically enough, Clotilde Nancanou 
waiting for him in his shop that she might make some 
arrangement to pay the next day's rent bill by the sale of 
her heaviest bracelet. His sudden appearance in the door- 
way, with the sweat of anguish on his brow and the matted 
blood on the back of his head, — the mark left by the billet 
of Palmyre's Congo dwarf — transformed the timid Creole 
woman into a brave nurse, who bathed his head with her own 
handkerchief, took him by the arm, and cried : " Asseyez- 
iwus, Monsieii' — pliz to give you'sev de pens to see down, 
'Sieu' Frowenfel'." Pressing back his forehead with a tremu- 
lous tenderness and wiping off the blood, she said, " Mague 
yo' 'ead back. . . . Were you is 'urted? " Raoul's un- 
comfortable question as to where Frowenfeld had left his 
hat brought out a general defense of himself by the apothe- 
cary, in which he despairingly protested his innocence, 
reaching out both his hands and quite losing his customary 
self-control. " 'Sieu' Frowenfel' ! " impulsively exclaimed 
Clotilde, the tears springing to her eyes, " I am shoe of it ! " 
But realizing that in this case the truth only would seem incredi- 
ble, the wounded man gave way to the hopelessness of the 
situation until Clotilde revived him by a glass of water, and 
by the heroic and confident assertion : " 'Sieu' Frowenfel', 
you har a hinnocen' man ! Go, hopen yo' do's an' stan' juz 
as you har ub biffo dad crowd and sesso ! " Suddenly 
recovering the full stature of his manhood, Frowenfeld 
called a blessing on her and a reward from God : " You 
beheve in me, and you do not even know me." But saying 
more than she meant to reveal, and blushing violently at 
her own words, Clotilde answered : " Mais, I does know you 



" The Grandissimes " 127 

— betteh'n you know annyt'in' 'boud it ! " And Frowenfeld 
started at this delightful revelation of her secret love. 

Even the cynical and abrupt Dr. Keene used to remark 
that Clemence — the old negress that sold calas and secretly 
carried voudou charms for the Philosophe — was a thinker. 
It was revealed both in the cunning aptness of her songs and 
in the droll wisdom of her sayings ; and her shrewd obser- 
vations on the condition of the black race under slavery and 
the Creole attitude toward it are something of an index, 
doubtless, to Mr. Cable's own views concerning slavery and 
the caste spirit which have, directly and indirectly, so large 
a place in the book. 

Once, in the course of chaffering over the price of calas, 
Dr. Keene proclaimed the old current conviction, which is 
still sometimes heard expressed, that the slaves were " the 
happiest people under the sun." To which Clemence was 
bold enough to make indignant denial, and was told in re- 
tort that she had " promulgated a falsehood of magnitude." 
" W'y, Mawse Chawlie," she repHed, " does you s'pose one 
po' nigga kin tell a big lie ? No, sah ! But w'en de whole 
people tell w'at ain' so — if dey know it, aw if dey don' 
know it — den dat is a big lie ! " 

Asked if she charged white people with lying, Clemence 
pretended to make this defense of the whites : " Oh, sakes, 
Mawse Chawlie, no ! De people don't mek up dat ah ; de 
debble pass it on 'em. Don' you know de debble ah de 
grett cyount'feiteh? Ev'y piece o' money he mek he tek 
an' put some debblemen' on de under side, an' one o' his 
pootiess lies on top ; an' 'e gilt dat lie, and e' rub dat lie on 
'is elbow, an' 'e shine dat He, an' 'e put 'is bess licks on dat 
lie ; entel ev'ybody say, ' Oh, how pooty ! ' An' dey tek it 
fo' good money, yass — and pass it ! Dey b'lieb it ! " 



128 Provincial Types in the South 

The quizzing remark of a bystander, to the effect that the 
"niggers" didn't know when they were happy, called out 
the retort on the part of Clemence, " Dass so, Mawse — 
c'est vraiy out J we donno no mo'n white folks ! " This natu- 
rally won the laugh against the speaker ; and when Clemence 
naively asked the doctor whether all '' niggas " were free 
in Europe, and he replied that something like that was true, 
the shrewd negress observed : " Well now, Mawse Chawlie, 
I gwan t' ass you a riddle. If dat is so, den fo' w'y I yeh 
folks bragg'n 'bout de ' stayt o' s'iety in Eu'ope '? " 

Making a gesture of attention she continued : " D'y' ebber 
yeh w'at de cya'ge-hoss say w'en 'e see de cyaht-hoss tu'n 
loose in de sem pawstu'e wid he, an' knowed dat some'ow 
de cyaht gotteh be haul' ? W'y 'e jiz snawt an' kick up 'is 
heel' " — she suited the action to the word — " an' tah' 
roun' de fiel' an' prance up to de fence an' say, * Whoopy ! 
shoo ! shoo ! dis yeh country gittin' too free ! ' " Another 
laugh on the part of the onlookers, and Clemence resumed : 
" Oh, white folks is werry kine. Dey wants us to b'lieb we 
happy — dey wants to b'lieb we is. W'y, you know, dey 
'bleeged to b'lieb it — fo' dey own cyumfut. 'Tis de sem 
weh wid de preache's ; dey buil' we ow own sep'ate meet'n'- 
houses ; dey b'leebs us lak it de bess, an' dey knows dey lak 
it de bess." 

Such speeches as these, though smiled at, were not en- 
tirely forgotten by the more prejudiced element among the 
Creoles, and when later poor Clemence was caught at night 
in a trap and made to confess at the mouth of a pistol the 
sender of voudou charms, her often expressed views had 
not a little influence in determining her awful fate. 

Events like Honor^ Grandissime's heroic restitution to 
Aurore and Clotilde of the Nancanou estate that had come 



" The Grandissimes " 129 

to his uncle Agricola as the result of a gambling contest, and 
his still more difficult defiance of the implacable Grandissime 
caste spirit in recognizing his less-white half-brother and 
admitting him into the business under the new firm-name 
of " Grandissime Brothers," — such revolutionary things had 
happened in the absence of Dr. Keene in the West Indies 
in search of health. Fortunately for him, Raoul Innerarity, 
artist and new bridegroom, in his impatience to get back to 
his wife, boarded the schooner bearing the doctor to New 
Orleans, and became without effort newspaper and local 
gossip. Raoul's first words were : " My cousin Honore, — 
well you kin jus' say 'e bitray' 'is 'ole fam'ly." And when 
asked to explain so strong and startling a statement, Raoul 
indignantly continued : " Well, — ce't'nly 'e did ! Di'n' 'e 
gave dat money to Aurora de Grapion ? — one 'undred five 
t'ousan' dolla'? Jis' as if to say, 'Yeh's de money my 
h-uncle stole from you' 'usban'.' Hah ! w'en I will swear 
on a stack of Bible' as 'igh as yo' head, dat Agricole win 
dat 'abitation fair ! — If I see it? No, sir; I don't 'ave to 
see it ! I'll swear to it ! Hah ! " And Raoul added the 
surprising statement that the receivers of all this money 
were " livin' in de rue Royale in mag-;z(^ycen' style on top 
de drug-sto' of Profis-or Frowenfel'." "An listen! You 
think Honors di'n' bitrayed 'is family? Madame Nan- 
canou an' heh daughtah livin' upstair' an' rissy-ving de finess 
soci'ty in de Province ! — an me? — down-stair' meckin' pill' ! 
You call dat justice ? " Ignoring the doctor's inquiry as 
to whether Honor^ and Frowenfeld were callers in the new 
quarters, the prejudiced Creole addressed a question of his 
own : " Doctah Keene, I hask you now, plain, don' you find 
dat mighty disgressful to do dat way, lak Honor^?" And 
at the doctor's expression of ignorance as to the way, the 



ijo Provincial Types in the South 

excited Raoul asked : "Wat? You dunno? You don' yeh 
'ow 'e gone partner' wid a nigga? . . . Yesseh ! 'e gone 
partner' wid dat quadroon w'at call 'imself Honore Gran- 
dissime, seh ! " " What do the family say to that? " '^ But 
w'at can dey say? It save dem from ruin ! At de sem time, 
me, I think it is a disgress. Not dat he h-use de money, 
but it is dat name w'at 'e give de h-establismen' — Gran- 
dissime Freres ! H-only for 'is money we would 'ave catch' 
dat quadroon gen'leman an' put some tar and fedder. Gran- 
dissime Freres ! Agricole don' spik to my cousin Honore 
no mo'." 

After the capture of Clemence, the voudou agent of 
Palmyre, and the ruling of Agricola out of the council of 
vengeance, this fierce and irrational embodiment of caste 
spirit, carrying in one hand his screed on the " Insanity of 
Educating the Masses," and in the other hand a staff, set out 
for Frowenfeld's pharmacy. While Agricola was there in 
conversation with the proprietor, who should walk in for a 
prescription but Honors Grandissime f m. c. (free man of 
color). Agricola's wrathful demand that Frowenfeld should 
turn that negro out, was followed by another, made directly 
to the quadroon himself, to take off his hat. The quadroon 
slowly slipped his thin right hand into his bosom and replied 
in his soft, low voice, " I wear my hat on my head." 
Whereupon the furious Agricola struck the quadroon on the 
head with his staff, and before the onlookers could interfere 
the men had grappled and fallen, the quadroon beneath. 
Suddenly from below a long knife was Hfted and thrust three 
times into the old Agricola's back. He was carried upstairs 
to the apartments of Aurora and Clotilde, the wife and child 
of his old enemy, and there with his dying words he ex- 
claimed against the new regime — the Americain in Louisi- 



" The Grandissimes " 131 

ana. " Your Yankee government is a failure, Honore, a 
drivelling failure. It may live a year or two, not longer. 
Truth will triumph. The old Louisiana will rise again. 
She will get back her trampled rights. When she does, 
remem — " but his voice suddenly failed. Addressing him- 
self later to Frowenfeld, he falteringly said : " Beware, my 
son, of the doctrine of equal rights — a bottomless iniquity. 
Master and man — arch and pier — arch above — pier be- 
low. . . . Society has pyramids to build which make 
menials a necessity, and Nature furnishes the menials all in 
dark uniform." His last act, most unexpected and dramatic 
of all, was to unite with his waning strength the hands of his 
nephew, Honore Grandissime, with those of Aurora de 
Grapion, saying as he did so that he had pledged this union 
to Aurora's father twenty years before. His last words — 
and they were appropriately put upon his tomb — were, 
" Louisian — a — for — ever ! " 

But a deathbed union, such as that performed by Agric- 
ola Fusilier, was not binding in the eyes of Aurora Nanca- 
nou ; and although her love for Honore Grandissime was 
beyond doubt in her own mind, she feared that he was 
merely carrying out the wish of his dying uncle. "An' 
w'en someboddie git'n ti'ed livin' wid 'imsev an' big'n to fill 
ole, an' wan' someboddie to teg de care of 'im an' wan' me 
to gid marri'd wid 'im — I thing 'e's in love wid me." And 
this love seems to the little Creole widow — who is living at 
the advanced age of thirty-five — to bring back her youth. 
"Some day', 'Sieur Grandissime, — id mague me fo'gid my 
hage ! I thing I'm young ! " She has " so mudge troub' 
wit dad hawt " of hers that it seems at times to herself that 
she is " crezzy " and that she " muz be go'n' to die torecklie." 
She feels that in some way Honore is under obHgation to 



132 Provincial Types in the South 

marry her : " You know, 'Sieur Grandissirae, id woon be 
righd ! Id woon be juztiz to you I An' you de bez man I 
ewa know in my life, 'Sieur Grandissime ! " But finally, 
after his long and ardent persistency, filled with tormenting 
doubt, and even with a repeated " no " upon her wayward 
lips, she bursts into tears and laughter, and allows her splen- 
did suitor, head of a hostile house, to take her in his arms. 
And all the world rejoices in this dramatic union of beautiful 
love and high romance. 



CHAPTER X 

"THE PROPHET OF THE GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS" 
BY "CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK" 

When Thomas Bailey Aldrich, then editor of the Atlantic 
Monthly, invited OHver Wendell Holmes and William Dean 
Howells to dine with " Charles Egbert Craddock," there was 
a novel running serially in the Atlantic under the title of 
" The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains." The virility 
of the work, as well as that of the preceding short stories 
collected under the head of "In the Tennessee Mountains," 
had apparently marked the owner of the pseudonym as un- 
doubtedly a man. There was, too, a certain legal acumen 
displayed in some of the stories which might belong to a 
lawyer who had turned to hterature for recreation. And 
then there was the bold, manly handwriting of the heavily 
inked manuscripts, which once led Mr. Aldrich to remark, " I 
wonder if Craddock has laid in his winter's ink yet ; perhaps 
I can get a serial out of him." " Mr." Craddock proved to 
be Miss Murfree, and the serial was reahzed in "The 
Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains." 

There is little cause for wonderment that for six years 
Miss Murfree's identity was unknown — such intimate knowl- 
edge of the pent-up, ignorant, law-defying, hard-headed 
mountaineers of Tennessee must argue a man's life among 
the mountains themselves as the only means of obtaining 
such unique literary material. In reality, Miss Murfree's 

133 



134 Provincial Types in the South 

family had been in the habit of spending their summers in 
the Tennessee mountains, and with her keenness of observa- 
tion, her swift insight into character, and her poetic sensi- 
bihty Miss Murfree was able to portray her strange types and 
their impressive environment with truth and picturesque 
effect. 

Above Dorinda Cayce, as she plowed with her one 
ox down the corn-rows, rolled the mists and vapors of 
the Great Smoky Mountains, amid which, at times, the 
" Prophet " used to take refuge and wrestle in prayer for his 
own soul. Dorinda, the daughter of the old moonshiner, 
"Ground-hog" Cayce, was being helped in her plow- 
ing by her ardent lover. Rick Tyler, — at that time a 
hunted outlaw with a price upon his head. In their inter- 
mittent conversation, Dorinda suddenly remarked, referring 
to Parson Kelsey, the " Prophet" : " He 'lowed ter me ez 
he have been gin ter view strange sights a many a time in 
them fogs, an' sech." Presently, turning her eyes on her 
lover, who was plowing with his horse near by, she leaned 
hghtly on the plow-handles and continued : " I 'lowed ter 
him ez mebbe he hed drerapt them visions. I knows I hev 
thunk some toler'ble cur'ous thoughts myself, ef I war tired 
an' sleepin' hard. But he said he reckoned I hed drempt 
no sech dreams ez his'n. I can't holp sorrowin' fur him 
some. He 'lowed ez Satan hev hunted him like a pa'tridge 
on the mounting." 

Rick, the lover, was somewhat jealous of the Prophet, 
who, as Dorinda said, stopped to rest occasionally at the 
Cayces' on his way down from " the bald," where he went to 
pray. " In the name o' reason," exclaimed the young lover 
petulantly, "why can't he pray somewhar' else? A man ez 
hev got ter h'ist hisself on the bald of a mounting ten mile 



" Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains" 135 

high — except what's lackin' — to git a purchase on prayer 
hain't got no religion vvuth talkin' 'bout. Sinner ez I am, I 
kin pray in the valley — way down yander in Tuckaleechee 
Cove — ez peart ez on enny bald in the Big Smoky." 

But soon, catching the sound of a horse's hoof striking on 
a stone far down the mountain road, Rick swiftly saddled 
his horse, from which Dorinda had deftly taken the plow- 
gear, and disappeared in the dense laurel that screened the 
mountain fastnesses. 

Dorinda, at twilight time, was hunting for the vagrant cow 
and now and then calling " soo-cow ! soo ! " when she heard 
a sound alien to the echoes of her own cry. Now and again 
from the great " bald " above her came the appealing, tem- 
pestuous tones of the Prophet, and Dorinda said, with a sort 
of pity in her voice, "He hev fairly beset the throne o' 
grace !" As she passed along singing, she came suddenly, a 
little later, upon the Prophet himself, standing by his yoke 
of weary oxen, which he was allowing a few moments of rest 
after a hard day of plowing. The Prophet was of medium 
height, " slender but sinewy, dressed in brown jeans, his 
trousers thrust into the legs of his boots, a rifle on his shoulder, 
and a broad-brimmed old wool hat surmounting his dark hair, 
that hung down to the collar of his coat." His eyes had a 
peculiar luster of fire or inspiration or frenzy, — in strange 
contrast to his otherwise dullard aspect. Dorinda asked 
solemnly as to how the moral vineyard was thriving, and 
then remarked encouragingly, " I hearn tell ez thar war a 
right smart passel o' folks baptized over yander in Scola- 
cutta River." The Prophet replied that he had baptized 
fourteen, and Dorinda exclaimed, "They hed all fund 
grace!" "They 'lowed so," returned the parson. "I 
hopes they'll prove it by thar works." Asked by Dorinda 



136 Provincial Types in the South 

if he had been praying for them on " the bald," he answered, 
'* Naw, I war a-prayin' for myself." 

Upon these two in strange dialogue came riding Gid 
Fletcher, the blacksmith, bringing the news of the capture 
of Rick Tyler while he was attempting to buy powder at the 
Settlement. The news made the trees unsteady before the 
eyes of Dorinda, and the stars became a circle of dazzling 
gleams. She caught at the yoke, leaned against one of the 
oxen, and bent every sense into the act of listening. Sud- 
denly there came a change in Parson Kelsey's manner. His 
fiery eyes turned upon the blacksmith, his face was trans- 
formed with light and hfe, his figure grew erect and tense, 
and he stretched forth an accusing gesture. '' 'Twar you- 
uns, Gid Fletcher, ez tuk the boy ! " This in the minds of 
the blacksmith and Dorinda was only another confirmation 
of the parson's power in the mysterious matter of abnormal 
foreknowledge. And when the blacksmith, with rising 
blood, inquired why the Prophet should think it was he 
rather than others that had effected the treacherous capture, 
the mind-reader fearlessly responded : " Yer heart air ez 
hard ez yer anvil, Gid Fletcher. Thar ain't another man on 
the Big Smoky ez would stir himself ter gin over ter the 
gallus or the pen'tiary the frien' ez trested him, who hev 
done no harm, but hev got tangled in a twist of a unjest 
law." 

The blacksmith's exonerating suggestion that the gov- 
ernor of Tennessee had offered a reward of two hundred 
dollars for Rick's capture called out the uncompromis- 
ing comment of the parson, "Blood money." The black- 
smith's insistence that the earning of the reward was 
lawful prompted the fierce exclamation of the Prophet : 
" Lawful ! Judas war a law-abidin' citizen. He mos' lawfully 



" Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains ** 137 

betrayed his Frien' ter the law. Them thirty pieces o' 
silver ! Sech currency ain't out o' circulation yit ! " 

Quick as a flash the blacksmith's heavy hand struck the 
Prophet in the face, but the next moment his anger was 
plunged into fear; for there stood the assaulted and out- 
raged man with a loaded rifle in his hands, and the light- 
nings of heaven flashing in his eyes. But hardly had the 
blacksmith time to draw the breath he thought would be 
his last, when the Prophet turned to him the other cheek, 
and said, with all the dignity of his calling, " In the name of 
the Master." 

As the blacksmith rode away, he felt that the parson's 
rifle-ball would have been better than his own loss of moral 
and spiritual reputation, for in the Big Smoky, piety, or its 
simulacrum, was the point of honor. What an illustration 
of iniquity he would furnish for the parson's sermons, what 
a text ! The blacksmith, cast down and indignant, pon- 
dered on his homeward way the uncomfortable situation in 
these words : " Fur Hi Kelsey ter be a-puttin' up sech a 
pious mouth, an' a-turnin' the t'other cheek, an' sech, ter 
me, ez hev seen him hold his own ez stiff" in a many a free- 
handed fight, an' hev drawed his shootin'-irons on folks 
agin an' agin ! An' he fairly tuk the dep'ty, at that thar 
disturbamint at the meet'n'-house, by the scruff o' the neck, 
an' shuck him ez ef he hed been a rat or suthin', an' drapped 
him out'n the door. An' now ter be a-turnin' the t'other 
cheek ! " 

The parson's fearless interruption of the gander- pulling 
sport, his uncompromising prediction of 'Cajah Green's 
failure to be reelected, and the mysterious escape of Rick 
Tyler, with which the parson's cooperation was vaguely hinted 
at, bring us to the time when the parson, riding along the 



ijS Provincial Types in the South 

valley road and looking up at the mountain heights, was 
lifted into a sort of spiritual exaltation by the thought 
that *'on a mountain the ark rested; on a mountain the 
cross was planted ; the steeps beheld the glories of the 
transfiguration ; the lofty sohtudes heard the prayers of 
Christ ; and from the heights issued the great sermon in- 
stinct with all the moralities of every creed." But this 
mood of special exaltation, in which he was almost happy, 
was miserably broken as he rode along reading his Bible, 
by the unconscious flattery of a roadside mountaineer, who 
cried out in the fervor of his admiration, '^ Kin ye read 
yer book, pa'son, an' ride yer beastis all ter wunst? " Alas ! 
" that tree of knowledge, — ah, the wily serpent ! Galilee, 
— it was thousands of miles away across the deep salt seas." 

Closing his book with an exulting smile of pride in his 
own superior achievement, he said: "The beast don't 
hender me none. I kin read ennyvvhar." Whereupon the 
admiring mountaineer declared his intention of taking the 
whole family the following Sunday to hear the parson's 
sermon. " I 'low ez a man what kin ride a beastis an' read 
a book all ter wunst mus' be a powerful exhorter, an' 
mebbe ye'll lead us all ter grace." 

The Prophet's momentary pleasure in this admiration and 
unconscious flattery fled before the sense of his own vanity 
and unworthiness. " He remembered Peter, the impetuous, 
and Thomas, the doubter, and the warm generosities of the 
heart of him whom Jesus loved, and he ' reckoned ' that 
they would not have left Him standing in the road for the 
joy of hearing their learning praised." " The Lord lifts 
me up," he said, " ter dash me on the groun' ! " 

The afternoon of the same day he reached the house of 
the Cayces on the slope of the mountain, and being asked 



" Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains " 139 

by the old woman to stop and " rest his bones," he tarried 
awhile in conversation with Dorinda and her mother. To 
the latter's question, " Be you-uns a-goin' ter hold fo'th or 
Brother Jake Tobin ? " the parson replied : ''It air me ez 
air a-goin' ter preach." Whereupon the old woman promptly 
declared : " Then I'm a-comin'. It do me good ter hear 
you-uns fairly make the sinners spin. Sech a gift o' speech 
ye hev got ! I fairly see hell when ye talk o' thar doom. 
I see wrath an' I smell brimstone. Lord be thanked, I hev 
fund peace ! An' I'm jes' a-waitin' fur the good day ter 
come when the Lord '11 rescue me from yearth ! " Unfortu- 
nately her daughter Dorinda, as the mother told the parson, 
was not yet " convicted," and the old woman demanded of 
him: "Why n't ye speak the truth ter her, pa'son? Fix 
her sins on her." " Sometimes," responded the parson in 
strange depression, " I dunno ef I hev enny call ter say a 
word. I hev preached ter others, an' I'm like ter be a 
castaway myself" 

In the little log meeting-house at the Notch on the fol- 
lowing Sunday, after a long preliminary service by the unc- 
tuous Brother Jake Tobin and a labored prayer by Brother 
Reuben Bates, Parson Kelsey stepped forward to the table 
and opened the book, while the congregation expectantly 
composed itself to listen to the sermon. He turned the 
leaves of the New Testament for a text, but suddenly into 
his mind came skulking a " grewsome company of doubts. 
In double file they came : fate and free agency, free will 
and foreordination, infinite mercy and infinite justice, God's 
loving-kindness and man's intolerable misery, redemption 
and damnation." They proved too strong for this crudely 
logical, morbidly conscientious mountain preacher — the very 
opposite type from Edward Eggleston's Mr. Bosaw — and 



T40 Provincial Types in the South 

he closed the Bible with a sudden impulse and the galvanic 
announcement, " My frien's, I stan' not hyar ter preach 
ter-day, but fur confession." Amid the intense silence 
following the announcement, he agonizingly cried out : " I 
hev los' my faith! God ez gin it — ef thar is a God — 
hev tuk it away. You-uns kin go on. You-uns kin b'lieve. 
Yer paster b'lieves, an' he'll lead ye ter grace, — leastwise 
ter a better life. But fur me thar's the nethermost depths 
of hell, ef — ef thar be enny hell." At the rising protest of 
Parson Tobin, the Prophet lifted his hand in deprecation — 
" bear with me a little ; ye'll see me hyar no more. Fur 
me thar is shame, ah ! an' trial, ah ! an' doubt, ah ! an' 
despair, ah ! . . . My name is ter be a by-word an' a 
reproach 'mongst ye. . . . An' I hev hed trials, — none 
like them ez air comin', comin', down the wind." 

He stood erect, he looked bold and youthful, and in his 
eyes shone the strange light that always marked his inspira- 
tion or frenzy. " I will go forth from 'mongst ye, — I that 
am not of ye. Another shall gird me an' carry me where I 
would not. Hell an' the devil hev prevailed agin me. 
Pray fur me, brethren, ez I cannot pray fur myself. Pray 
that God may yet speak ter me, — speak from out o' the 
whirlwind." 

There was a sound upon the air, a thrill ran through the 
horrified congregation, galloping hoof-beats came nearer, 
the sheriff strode up the aisle and laid his hand upon the 
preacher's shoulder, and the Prophet was under arrest in his 
own pulpit ! Self-convicted of the blasphemy of infidehty and 
arrested as a culprit before the law ! He was accused of 
having rescued Rick Tyler from the hands of the law, and 
in his utter innocence he cried in a tense voice, " I never 
rescued Rick Tyler ! " Brother Jake Tobin consolingly 



" Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains " 141 

remarked, "■ Yer sins hev surely fund ye out, Brother Kel- 
sey," while the Prophet, with a fierce inward struggle, 
allowed himself to be led away from among them. 

Despite the efforts of Dorinda Cayce to persuade her 
jealous lover. Rick Tyler, — who had been exonorated of 
his alleged crime, — to testify in behalf of Parson Kelsey, or 
even to have his testimony put in the form of an affidavit, 
to the effect that Rick was his own rescuer, the innocent 
parson was brought to trial. The judge strongly charged 
the jury in favor of the defendant, and, after the verdict of 
acquittal, stated indignantly that there had been practically 
no evidence against the parson, and that the whole case was 
one of flagrant malice. Gid Fletcher, the blacksmith, who 
was a witness at the trial, reported that the Prophet had 
risen and reviled both himself and 'Cajah Green, the sheriff, 
in open court. " 'Pears like he hed read the Bible so con- 
stant jes' ter Tarn ev'ry creepy soundin' curse ez could be 
called down on the heads o' men." 

With the return of Parson Kelsey to the Big Smoky came 
a snow-storm, covering the ground with a thick whiteness. 
As he trudged along up the mountain he came to the log- 
cabin of old Ground-hog Cayce, whose still had been de- 
stroyed through information furnished by 'Cajah Green, the 
ex-sheriff. Knocking at the door, the Prophet was admitted 
to a circle of alert, expectant men, — Cayce and his stalwart 
sons. Kelsey noted their aspect of repressed excitement 
and how uneasily they shifted tneir chairs, which grated 
harshly on the puncheon floor. The conversation finally 
ran upon 'Cajah Green and the destruction wrought in the 
cave where the Cayces' illicit still had stood. One of the 
sons suddenly turned to Kelsey and asked, "Ye w'wants 
him .shot, hey, pa'son?" And with flashing eye Kelsey 



142 Provincial Types in the South 

replied, " I pray that the Lord may cut him off." The par- 
son was thinking of his arrest by Green and of his unjust 
trial due to the malevolence of the same man. But when 
he fully realized that the moonshiners were really bent on 
murdering the ex-sheriff, his mind changed into compassion 
and into horror at the thought of such cold-blooded crime. 
Lifting his hand suddenly, with an imperative gesture, and 
with the old-time religious light in his eyes, the Prophet 
exclaimed : " Listen ter me ! Ye'U repent o' yer deeds this 
night ! An' the jedgmint o' the Lord will foller ye ! Yer 
father's gray hairs will go down in sorrow ter the grave, but 
his mind will die before his body. An' some o' you-uns 
will languish in jail, an' know the despair o' the bars. . . . 
An' but for the coward in the blood, ye would take yer own 
life then ! An' ye'll look at the grave before ye, an' hope ez 
it all ends thar." He was transfigured before them, and they 
quailed momentarily in the presence of so dire and authori- 
tative a prophecy. But the effect soon was lost, and when 
Kelsey attempted to leave, one of the sons threw himself 
against the door and prevented. 

The night wore on, the fire roared, and the men sat 
intently Hstening about the hearth. Suddenly there was a 
growl from the dogs under the house, and then the sound of 
crunching hoofs on the snow. The men moved out, swift and 
silent as shadows, there was a struggle in the road, a wild cry 
for help, the firing of a pistol, and 'Cajah Green was a prisoner 
in the hands of the murderous Cayces. Kelsey, who had no 
horse, was made to ride with the prisoner and just in front 
of him, and about them rode the silent squad of moon- 
shiners. Micajah Green begged for his life as he went, — 
he denied, and explained, and promised ; but old man 
Cayce savagely and briefly commented : " Ye cotton ter 



" Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains " 143 

puttin' folks in jail, 'Cajah ! Yer turn now ! We'll put 
ye whar the dogs won't bite ye." And so in the still night 
they wound their way through the dense laurel to the 
mouth of the cave where the Cayce whisky still once 
stood. They could hear the sound of the dark, cold water 
rippling in the vaulted place where the dammed current now 
rose halfway to the roof. The wretched prisoner, foreseeing 
the savage form of his death, made a last despairing struggle, 
and Pete Cayce, reaching up, cried out to Kelsey, '' Lemme 
git a holt of him, Hi." « Hyar he be," gasped the parson ; 
there was another frantic struggle as they tore the doomed 
man from the horse, a splash, a muffled cry, and a man dis- 
appeared in the black water. A great bowlder hard by was 
given a push, and fell, completely blocking the cave's mouth. 
Then the terrorized men mounted their horses in the dark- 
ness and rode away in all directions as if pursued. The 
next day it was reported that just at daybreak that morning 
Micajah Green was seen riding by on his big gray horse at a 
wild rate of speed ; and slowly it dawned on the inhabitants 
of the Big Smoky that, Christhke, the Prophet had sacrificed 
himself for his inveterate enemy, and lay dead in the black 
waters of the cave. 



PROVINCIAL TYPES IN THE 
MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 

CHAPTER XI 

A BRIEF SURVEY OF THE FIELD 

It is a little difficult for a professional humorist to make 
people think that he is making a positive addition to the 
knowledge of any section of the country or of its indige- 
nous types ; but even in " Life on the Mississippi " Mr. 
Clemens has given us some very distinct and picturesque 
impressions of provincial character in the Southwest. And 
this is particularly true in " Huckleberry Finn," whose hero 
became familiar to the world as the notorious son of the 
town drunkard in " The Adventures of Tom Sawyer." If, 
as Mr. Howells thinks, Mark Twain's humor is, at its best, 
" the foamy break of the strong tide of earnestness in him," 
we should expect to find even in such a work as " Huckle- 
berry Finn " much that is vital in characterization and in- 
teresting for its very truth's sake. Many readers will be 
surprised to know that one of the most authoritative critics 
of the world, Mr. Andrew Lang, says that " Huckleberry 
Finn " is already " an historical novel and more valuable, 
perhaps, to the historian than ' Uncle Tom's Cabin,' for it 
is written without partisanship and without 'a. purpose.' 
. . . The world appreciates it, no doubt, but ' cultured 
critics ' are probably unaware of its singular value." 

144 



A Brief Survey of the Field 145 

The homely but inimitable tale of how Huck, with his 
new-found fortune, at interest, yielding a dollar a day — 
'' more than a body could tell what to do with " — became 
the adopted son of the Widow Douglass ; and how he re- 
belled from respectability and new clothes and regularity, 
and particularly from the moral "pecking" of the " sHm 
old maid," Miss Watson ; and how he escaped in the night 
to relieve the terrible ennui and joined Tom Sawyer's rob- 
ber gang in the cave ; how he consulted Miss Watson's 
"nigger," Jim, — with his prophetic "hair-ball," — about 
Huck's drunken father and his purposes; and how the 
father went to law about him with the widow and finally 
carried his son off up the Mississippi in a skiff and kept 
him a sort of prisoner in an old log hut, until the restraint 
and the cowhiding and his father's deHrium tremens got 
to be too much for Huck, and he made his escape down 
the river in a canoe, — such is the beginning of this unique 
and dramatic story, that gives so many vivid impressions of 
life on the river and along the fringes of the adjoining 
states. Huck's night arrival at Jackson's Island, his silent 
watching of the efforts to raise his supposed dead body 
from the river by means of the cannon-firing, his sensa- 
tional discovery on the island of Miss Watson's runaway 
"nigger," Jim, their adventurous life together in the cavern, 
Huck's disguise as a girl, and the swift penetration of it 
by Mrs. Judith Loftus of St. Petersburg, and the sudden 
slipping away of slave and boy from their dangerous island, 
— these are part of the absorbing narrative. And the wreck 
with its murderous gang, the blinding fogs and measure- 
less depths of star-Ht skies, the hopeless missing of Cairo 
in the night, the smashing of the raft by the big steamer, 
all pass before us like a panorama of the great stream. 



146 Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley 

And then, what strokes of dramatic power in the descrip- 
tion of the vendetta, — the family feud of the fighting 
Shepherdsons and Grangerfords, — and what telHng char- 
acterizations in Huck himself, his besotted and brutalized 
father, the loyal and superstitious Jim, Colonel Sherborne, 
who coolly shoots old Boggs and superbly quells the 
mob ; the various old aunts and uncles ; and those humor- 
ous impostors, the ''Duke," and the "King." A great 
variety of phases in the Hfe of the Southwest, forty or fifty 
years ago, is set forth with reahstic power — such phases as 
camp-meetings and circuses and funerals and entertain- 
ments. And nights on the great river, storms, sketches of 
decayed towns and of changing landscape, woods, and 
cotton fields are painted with a simple and direct power 
that makes them the vivid environment of all these varied 
types of peculiar character. The story, indeed, lapses into 
a long-drawn and rather tedious burlesque, in the formal 
freeing of the already free Jim according to Tom Sawyer's 
" best authorities " ; yet here is a realism of such intense 
interest and authenticity that occasional defects in taste 
can easily be overlooked. And through it all is illustrated 
that humorous power of calm exaggeration which the world 
has come to recognize as Mr. Clemens's distinctive gift. 

Before the state of Indiana had become a center of 
literary activity and interest, and the ways of primitive 
Hoosier life had been little studied, there appeared in 1872 
" The Hoosier Schoolmaster," written by a man who was 
born in the southern part of the state in the memorable 
year of 1837, and who spent his boyhood there in farm 
labor and as a clerk in a country store. His mother, after 
the death of his father, had married a Methodist doctor of 
divinity in Indiana ; and this gave him what people of his 



A Brief Survey of the Field 147 

neighborhood would have called " a right smart chance of 
travel." At nineteen this boy became a circuit rider in 
Indiana for his chosen church ; and in this way Edward 
Eggleston became peculiarly fitted by environment and 
experience to portray the provincial and unique types that 
move so vigorously through the pages of " The Circuit 
Rider," "The End of the World/' "Roxy," and "The 
Hoosier Schoolmaster." The opening chapter of the last- 
mentioned book presents a strange picture of one of those 
crude and almost repulsive families that must have existed 
in early Indiana history, — old Jack Means, the school 
trustee, to whom Ralph Hartsook made application for the 
place of schoolmaster in the Flat Crick school ; " Bud " 
Means, who seemed to be measuring the young applicant 
by the standard of muscle alone ; the giggling " Sis," who was 
evidently dehghted at the prospect of seeing the bulldog 
take hold of the somewhat disheartened teacher ; " Bill," 
who on the first morning of school put the puppy in the 
master's desk ; and " Bull " himself, who, despite his threat- 
ening looks, was a bulldog to teach by example the advan- 
tages of " nerve," — " Ef Bull once takes a holt, heaven 
and yarth can't make him let go." 

What with fighting the boys ; incurring the hostility of a 
gang of horse-thieves and burglars, who have at their head 
the principal physician among the Flat Crickers; narrowly 
escaping with his life from the instigated mob ; and being 
driven to public trial for alleged complicity in robbery, — 
the young schoolmaster has a somewhat tragic history. But 
he makes his innocence and courage clear in the trial, and 
finally succeeds in marrying Hannah, the " bound gal," who 
had proved victorious over him in that most dramatic of 
events, the country spelling- match. 



148 Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley 

Hannah's brother, Shocky, whom '' God forgot/' — at 
least for a time, — is a pathetic httle figure, made doubly 
so by the misery of his mother in the poorhouse and of his 
sister, Hannah, bound out to service. Old pipe-smoking 
Mrs. Means, with her thrifty proverb of " Git a plenty while 
you're a-gittin' " ; ' Squire Hawkins, with his black gloves, 
waxen-colored wig, glass eye, and false teeth ; Jeems Phil- 
Hps, that genius in " Webster's Elementary " ; and the 
insinuating but silent Dr. Small, — are all distinctly indi- 
vidualized from the Hfe. And so are Pete Jones, with his 
educational theory of " No lickin' no larnin' " ; Granny 
Sanders, the fountain-head of gossip ; Miss Martha Hawkins, 
whose reminiscence always began, " When I was to Bos- 
ting " ; and the generous-hearted, one-legged, warlike old 
basket-maker who summed up his observations with the 
despairing remark that "we're all selfish akordin' to my 
tell." 

In the midst of all the crude religious sects of the 
time stands out the Rev. Mr. Bosaw of the " Hardshell " 
Baptist denomination, — otherwise known as the " Whisky 
Baptists " and the " Forty-gallon Baptists," — and Mr. 
Eggleston gives verbatim the incredible sermon preached 
by the reverend gentleman with the rich, red nose, the 
nasal resonance, and the melancholy minor key, — whose 
opening words were, "the ox-ah knoweth his owner-ah, 
and-ah the ass-ah his master's crib-ah." A fit companion 
type with Mr. Bosaw is " Brother Sodom," who always " shook 
his brimstone wallet" over the people and pushed them to 
the edge of hell. 

What might be called a secondary hero of the book is 
" Bud " Means, the young giant whom the schoolmaster won 
over by his grit and his character. He has become famous 



A Brief Survey of the Field 149 

for his founding of " The Church of the Best Licks," which 
included all who would " put in their best licks for Jesus 
Christ" (who was himself "a kind of a Flat Cricker"). 
Another piece of capital character- drawing is that of Miss 
Nancy Sawyer, the old maid who was a benediction to the 
whole town as well as to the young schoolmaster and 
Shocky. And the unspeakable conditions under which 
Shocky's mother lived in the poorhouse could not have 
been more repellendy described by Dickens himself than 
they have been in Mr. Eggleston's chapter on " A Charitable 
Institution." The book as a whole is a convincing study 
of types and a time that were a significant part of the 
development of the great Middle West. 

In such short stories as " Ma' BowHn'," " Whitsun Harp, 
Regulator," " Sist' Chaney's Black Silk " and " The Mortgage 
on Jeffy," which appear in the two collections called " Knitters 
in the Sun " and " Otto the Knight," Miss AHce French, 
more famiharly known by her pseudonym, " Octave Thanet," 
has given sketches of life as seen from a plantation in 
Arkansas, which the author makes her winter home ; and 
phases of character in other parts of the South are touched 
in " The Bishop's Vagabond " and " Half a Curse." But 
her best-known sketches are those contained in " Stories of 
a Western Town," in which she shows special knowledge of 
average types in Iowa and other communities west of the 
Mississippi. Her portrayal is intimate, vigorous, and sym- 
pathetic, and helps to give a somewhat adequate conception 
of what the actual life and feeling and aspiration are in 
certain parts of the Mississippi Valley. 

In his preface to " The Story of a Country Town " Mr. 
Edgar Watson Howe tells us that the book was written at 
night after the editorial work of the day was done. Such 



150 Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley 

conditions of production may not have influenced its point 
of view and its prevailing tone. But the book, Hke the 
Kansas town that it portrays, lacks a certain sunny quality 
of ease and geniality, which is doubtless due to the nature of 
the social life it sets forth so convincingly. Kansas has, 
also, in William Allen White an interpreter of certain 
phases of her hfe, and the interpretation is exceedingly 
keen in its insight and humorous and vigorous in its 
expression, as is shown in his volume of sketches entitled 
"The Real Issue" and in his juvenile "Court of Boyville." 

Hamlin Garland's early life in Wisconsin, Iowa, and Da- 
kota gave him abundant opportunity to study and appreciate 
the crude, earnest, aspiring, self-sacrificing men and women 
who made up the bone and sinew of the pioneer population 
of the great Northwest. Whether in the story of " A I>ittle 
Norsk," with its Dakota blizzard, its helpless child, and its 
pathetic burial of " Flaxen's " mother, or in " Prairie Folks " 
and the remarkable development of a young farm girl's na- 
ture in " Rose of Dutcher's Coolly," or in the depressing 
short stories of " Main-Traveled Roads," Mr. Garland shows 
a penetration and a knowledge and a sincerity of sympathy 
that make his work vital and effective, even if at times it 
seems to be too regularly keyed to misery and hopelessness. 
But any one who has Hved in the Northwest, and is at all 
familiar with the grim conditions of the average farmer's 
family even a few years ago, will be likely to feel that Mr. 
Garland's relentless depiction is, though heart-sickening, 
essentially true. 

Few more convincing and powerful pictures of Western 
provincial types can be found than those in "A Branch 
Road," "Up the Coolly," and "Under the Lion's Paw"; 
while underneath the tenderness and patient suffering of "The 



A Brief Survey of the Field 1 5 1 

Return of the Private " is felt the steel-Hke edge of a right- 
eous satire. " Mrs. Ripley's Trip " has in it a sort of sad 
humor and a closeness of sympathetic characterization that 
makes an irresistible appeal to the heart of every man who 
perchance recalls the laborious and conscientious days of his 
own unselfish mother. 

The jubilant young farmer, Will Hannan, singing in the 
September dawn, or, fiercely jealous, laboring with might 
and main in the strenuous threshing, or at meal-time appar- 
ently ashamed of his sweetheart's open preference for him- 
self in the presence of the other threshers ; his savage 
resentment at their use of Agnes Dingman's name in connec- 
tion with his own ; and his bitter refusal to wait and take 
supper with his comrades and his sweetheart, — this is the 
very human and unconventional opening to "A Branch 
Road." And then the young fellow's eager preparations for 
the county fair, his swift morning ride behind the lively colts, 
the maddening accident and delay, the silent house and the 
drawn curtains and no waiting sweetheart, and his bhnding, 
merciless rage, with all it involved in long years of absence, 
misery of married Hfe for Agnes Dingman, and bitter repent- 
ance for himself, — such is the tragic development from 
small beginnings ; — until he at length enters into the cruelty 
of his old sweetheart's fate, and desperately carries her and 
her child out into a world of hope and the happiness of love. 
Such a story as this — with all its sympathy for nature and 
for human nature — comes near to reality, and confirms, 
like the other stories in the volume, the impression of un- 
relenting hardness in much of the farmers' experience in the 
great Northwest during the latter half of the nineteenth cen- 
tury. 



CHAPTER XII 

"THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN" BY 
"MARK TWAIN" 

In his sense of duty and of honor, his abounding humor, 
his energy and dauntless pluck, his simpUcity and sympathy 
and fidelity, Mr. Clemens is justly regarded as a high type 
of an American citizen. He naturally enough comprehends 
pretty fully the salient characteristics of American types, 
and has, besides, the literary art to embody them in enter- 
taining and convincing form. The impression of artistry in 
his work, however, is likely to be lost in a laugh, — the truth 
and power and dramatic quality in his characterizations are 
often overlooked in the effects of his humor. As Mr. How- 
ells suggests, " Mark Twain portrays and interprets real 
types, not only with exquisite appreciation and sympathy, 
but with a force and truth of drawing that makes them per- 
manent." And the especial praise of the literary critics is 
given to " Huckleberry Finn " for its essential truthfulness 
to certain aspects of provincial life and character along the 
Mississippi and the borders of adjoining states. Professor 
Barrett Wendell in our own country and Andrew Lang in 
England have both borne strong testimony to the value and 
charm of this portrayal of life in the Mississippi Valley some 
fifty years ago. 

Mr. Clemens's own boyhood life at Hannibal, Missouri, 
on the Mississippi River, and his years as a pilot on the 

152 



" The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn " 153 

same river, gave him a vivid background and a close famil- 
iarity with various Southwestern types that proved invaluable 
in the production of such a book as " Huckleberry Finn." 

Huckleberry Finn first became known to the reading 
world as the companion of Tom Sawyer, of whose " Adven- 
tures " he was a part. Their good luck in finding the 
money hidden by the robbers in a cave left Huck in such 
affluent circumstances that he was getting a dollar a day in 
interest — "more than a body could tell what to do with." 
He had been adopted by the Widow Douglass, who was 
bent on civilizing him ; but he found it rough living in the 
house all the time, considering how " dismal regular and 
decent the widow was in all her ways." Her attempt to 
spiritualize Huck is thus described by himself : " After 
supper she got out her book and learned me about Moses 
and the Bulrushers, and I was in a sweat to find out all 
about him ; but by and by she let it out that Moses had been 
dead a considerable long time ; so then I didn't care no 
more about him, because I don't take no stock in dead peo- 
ple." And Miss Watson, the sHm old-maid sister of the 
Widow, " took a set " at Huck, also, with the spelling-book 
and frequent injunctions on conduct. Miss Watson would 
say, " Don't put your feet up there, Huckleberry ; " and, 
" Don't scrunch up like that. Huckleberry — set up straight ; " 
and a little later she would say, " Don't gap and stretch 
like that. Huckleberry — why don't you try to behave?" 
All of which had a wearisome effect on Huck. He called it 
"pecking" at him. "Then she told me all about the bad 
place, and I said I wished I was there. She got mad then, 
but I didn't mean no harm. All I wanted was to get some- 
wheres ; all I wanted was a change ; I warn't particular. 
She said it was wicked to say what I said ; said she wouldn't 



154 Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley- 
say it for the whole world ; she was going to live so as to go 
to the good place. Well, I couldn't see no advantage in 
going where she was going, so I made up my mind I 
wouldn't try for it." The morning after a night escapade 
with Tom Sawyer, Miss Watson took Huck into a closet and 
prayed with him, and told him to pray every day, remarking 
as an inducement that whatever he prayed for he would get. 
" But it warn't so. I tried it. Once I got a fishline, but 
no hooks. It warn't any good to me without hooks. I 
tried for the hooks three or four times, but somehow I 
couldn't make it work. By and by, one day, I asked Miss 
Watson to try for me, but she said I was a fool." However, 
the widow explained to her prot6g6 that he must pray for 
" spiritual gifts." 

The unexpected appearance of Huck's drunken and vaga- 
bond father in the boy's room at the widow's had, for a 
moment, a terrifying effect on Huck. After looking his son 
all over, the father said, with a critical and injured air : 
" Starchy clothes — very. You think you're a good deal of 
a big-bug, </(5';z'/ you? " To which Huck was non-commit- 
tal ; and the father continued : " You've put on considerable 
many frills since I been away. I'll take you down a peg 
before I get done with you. You're educated, too, they 
say — can read and write. You think you're better'n your 
father, now, don't you, because he can't? /'// take it out 
of you. Who told you you might meddle with such hifalut'n 
fooHshness, hey? " On Huck's reply that it was the widow, 
the father threatened to '' learn her how to meddle," and 
then added, ominously : " And looky here — you drop that 
school, you hear? I'll learn people to bring up a boy to 
put on airs over his own father, and let on to be better'n 
what he is. You lemme catch you fooling around that school 




From "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." 
Copja-ight, 189G, by Harper & Brothers. 



"The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 



155 



again, you hear? Your mother couldn't read, and she 
couldn't write, nuther, before she died. None of the family 
couldn't write before they died. I can't ; and here you're 
a-svvelUng yourself up like this. I ain't the man to stand it 
— you hear?" Asked by his father to read a Httle, as an 
example of what he could do, Huck read something about 
General Washington and the wars ; when suddenly the father 
struck the book from his son's hand and cried out angrily : 
*' It's so. You can do it. I had my doubts when you told 
me. Now, looky here ; you stop that putting on frills. I 
won't have it. I'll lay for you, my smarty ; and if I catch 
you about that school, I'll tan you good. First you know 
you'll get religion. I never see such a son." 

To show his superiority to the widow who had adopted 
Huck, his father carried him off up the river to an old log 
hut he had made the headquarters for his vagrant life. The 
intolerable monotony of a respectable life with the widow 
was thus done away with; but Huck soon found that his 
father's restraint, ugly temper, and drunkenness, finally 
culminating in a night of delirium tremens, were as hard 
to bear as the widow's respectability, and he escaped down 
the river to Jackson's Island. The next morning after his 
arrival he lay and listened to the booming of the cannon 
by which they were endeavoring to find his dead body ; and 
a little later the ferry-boat, carrying his own father. Judge 
Thatcher, who had invested Huck's money for him, and 
Tom Sawyer, his boon companion, came floating down 
close to the island in its effort to find some trace of the 
dead Huck, who was lying behind a log and watching the 
anxious faces of his friends. 

It was on this island that he discovered Miss Watson's 
runaway " nigger," Jim, just as he was waking at dawn by 



156 Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley 

the side of his camp-fire. Jim, in his amazement at seeing 
Huck, who had been reported murdered, suddenly sprang 
up, and then dropped upon his knees and put his hands 
together, crying superstitiously : " Doan' hurt me — don't ! 
I hain't ever done no harm to a ghos'. I awlus Uked dead 
people, en done all I could for 'em. Yo go en git in de 
river agin, whah you b'longs, en doan' do nuffin' to Ole 
Jim, 'at 'uz awluz yo' fr'en'." But Jim was soon so much 
reassured that he told Huck all the details of his own 
escape. He even grew confidential and told Huck about 
his past speculation in stock, — a cow, and in a bank 
set up by " Misto Bradish's nigger," — at the end of which 
Jim had only ten cents left. " Well, I 'uz gwyne to spen' 
it, but I had a dream, 'en de dream tole me to give it to a 
nigger name' Balum — Balum's Ass dey call him for short ; 
he's one er dem chuckle-heads, you know. But he's 
lucky, dey say, en I see I warn't lucky. De dream say let 
Balum inves' de ten cents en he'd make a raise for me. 
Well, Balum he tuck de money, en when he wuz in church 
he hear de preacher say dat whoever give to de po' len' to 
de Lord, en boun' to git his money back a hund'd times. 
So Balum he tuck en give de ten cents to de po', en laid 
low to see what wuz gwyne to come of it." To Huck's 
inquiry as to what did come of it, the darky replied : 
"Nufifin never come of it. I couldn' manage to k'leck dat 
money no way; en Balum he couldn'. I ain' gwyne to 
len' no mo' money 'dout I see de security. Bonn' to git 
yo* money back a hund'd times, de preacher says ! Ef I 
could git de ten cents back, I'd call it squah, en be glad 
er de chanst." Huck's hopeful suggestion that Jim was 
going to be rich sometime or other — according to Jim's 
own prophecy — called to the negro's mind the happy 



"The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" 157 

thought that he was already rich. " I owns myse'f, en 
I's wuth eight hund'd dollars. I wisht I had de money, I 
would n' want no mo'." 

Huck's discovery — in the guise of a girl — that there 
was a reward out for the capture of Jim and that Jackson's 
Island was a dangerous place, was the signal for their hur- 
ried departure from the island by night. The second niglu 

— they concealed themselves in a *' towhead " of cotton- 
woods during the day — the raft they were on ran between 
seven and eight hours, with a current that carried them 
along over four miles an hour. " It was kind of solemn," 
as Huck said, " drifting down the big still river, laying on 
our backs looking up at the stars, and we didn't ever feel 
like talking loud, and it warn't often that we laughed — 
only a little kind of a low chuckle. . . . Every night we 
passed towns, some of them away up on black hillsides 
nothing but just a shiny bed of lights ; not a house could you 
see. The fifth night we passed St. Louis, and it was hke the 
whole world lit up. In St. Petersburg they used to say 
there was twenty or thirty thousand people in St. Louis, 
but I never believed it till I see that wonderful spread of 
hghts at two o'clock that still night. There warn't a sound 
there ; everybody was asleep." 

Huck's escape from the wreck of the raft that had been 
smashed by a steamboat in the night brought him to the big 
old-fashioned double log house of Colonel Grangerford, 
whose dogs refused to let the dripping Huck go by. After 
a very warlike examination of Huck, he was gradually ad- 
mitted to the house ; and when it was learned that he was in 
no way connected with the rival house of the Shepherdsons, 

— between whom and the Grangerfords there was a deadly 
feud, — Huck was very hospitably received and compassion- 



158 Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley 

ately entertained on the strength of his trumped-up story. 
In the admiring words of Huck : " It was a mighty nice 
family, and a mighty nice house, too. I hadn't seen no 
house out in the country before that was so nice and had so 
much style. It didn't have an iron latch on the front door, 
nor a wooden one with a buckskin string, but a brass knob 
to turn, the same as houses in a town. There warn't no 
bed in the parlor, nor a sign of a bed ; but heaps of parlors 
in towns has beds in them. There was a big fireplace that 
was bricked on the bottom, and the bricks was kept clean 
and red by pouring water on them and scrubbing them with 
another brick. . . . They had big brass dog-irons that 
could hold up a saw-log." There was also a wonderful clock 
(" it was beautiful to hear that clock tick "), and some books 
piled up with perfect exactness on each corner of the table. 
" One was a big family Bible full of pictures. One was ' Pil- 
grim's Progress,' about a man that left his family, it didn't 
say why. I read considerable in it now and then. The 
statements was interesting but tough. Another was ' Friend- 
ship's Offering,' full of beautiful stuff and poetry; but I 
didn't read the poetry. Another was ' Henry Clay's 
Speeches,' and another was Dr. Gunn's * Family Medicine,' 
which told you all about what to do if a body was sick or 
dead." Among the pictures were some strange crayons 
made at the age of fifteen by a daughter who had since died. 
" One was a woman in a slim black dress, belted small under 
the armpits, with bulges like a cabbage in the middle of the 
sleeves, and a large black scoop-shovel bonnet with a black 
veil, and white slim ankles crossed about with black tape, 
and very wee black slippers, like a chisel, and she was lean- 
ing pensive on a tombstone on her right elbow, under a 
weeping willow, and her other hand hanging down her side 



"The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" 159 

holding a white handkerchief and a reticule, and underneath 
the picture it said ' Shall I Never See Thee More Alas.' " 
A second crayon was entitled "I Shall Never Hear Thy 
Sweet Chirrup More Alas," and another bore the pathetic 
announcement, " And Art Thou Gone Yes Thou Art Gone 
Alas." Huck has given us his critical judgment on these 
pictures and also their effect on his feehngs. " These was 
all nice pictures, I reckon, but I didn't somehow seem to 
take to them, because if ever I was down a Httle they always 
give me the fan-tods." 

In the eyes of Huck the proprietor of the place was a 
gentleman — "a gentleman all over." Colonel Granger- 
ford — and he must have been some near relative of the 
colonel's drawn with so much spirit and liking by Mr. Page 
and Hopkinson Smith — was " very tall and very slim, and 
had a darkish-paly complexion, not a sign of red in it any- 
wheres ; he was clean shaved every morning all over his thin 
face, and he had the thinnest kind of lips, and the thinnest 
kind of nostrils, and a high nose, and heavy eyebrows, and 
the blackest kind of eyes, sunk so deep back that they 
seemed like they was looking out of caverns at you, as you 
may say. His forehead was high, and his hair was black 
and straight and hung to his shoulders. His hands was long 
and thin, and every day of his life he put on a clean shirt 
and a full suit from head to foot made out of Hnen so white 
it hurt your eyes to look at it; and on Sundays he wore a 
blue tail-coat with brass buttons on it." He had a personal 
dignity that Huck was impressed by, and a pervasive kind- 
liness, and his smile was good to see. In his presence man- 
ners were instinctively good, and there was a genial sunshine 
about the man that every one Hked ; " but when he straight- 
ened himself up like a hberty-pole, and the lightning began 



i6o Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley 

to flicker out from under his eyebrows, you wanted to climb 
a tree first, and find out what the matter was afterwards." 

The tall, handsome older sons, Tom and Bob, dressed, like 
their father, in white linen from head to foot, and wore broad 
Panama hats ; and in their home life they had been reared 
to show especial courtesy to the parents. On the latter's 
arrival in the dining room the sons always rose from their 
chairs and remained standing till their parents were seated ; 
and after mixing at the sideboard a glass of bitters for their 
fiither and then for themselves, they would bow and say, 
"Our duty to you, sir and madam." 

But this Southern family, so chivalrous and courtly toward 
one another, were in deadly feud with their neighbors, the 
rival family of the Shepherdsons. Huck's ignorance of a 
feud was somewhat lessened by Buck Grangerford's defini- 
tion : " Well, a feud is this way : A man has a quarrel with 
another man, and kills him ; then that other man's brother 
kills him ; then the other brothers, on both sides, goes for 
one another ; then the cousins chip in — and by and by 
everybody's killed off, and there ain't no more feud. But 
it's kind of slow, and takes a long time." Buck also in- 
formed Huck that their own feud started some thirty years 
before, when there was " trouble 'bout something," a law- 
suit, and a shooting of the man who won the suit by the man 
who lost. Buck was entirely ignorant of the cause of the 
trouble and whether it was a Grangerford or a Shepherd- 
son that did the shooting ; but he thought that perhaps his 
fother knew. To Huck's question as to whether many had 
been killed in the feud. Buck cheerfully replied : " Yes ; 
right smart chance of funnerals. But they don't always kill. 
Pa's got a few buckshot in him ; but he don't mind it 'cuz 
he don't weigh much, anyway. Bob's been carved up some 



*' The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" i6i 

with a bowie, and Tom's been hurt once or twice." " Has 
anybody been killed this year, Buck ? " inquired Huck. 
"Yes; we got one and they got one." 

Buck, in a truly chivalrous spirit, insisted that there wasn't 
a coward among " them Shepherdsons," even if they were 
inveterate enemies. "Why, that old man [Shepherdson] 
kep' up his end in a fight one day for half an hour against 
three Grangerfords, and come out winner. They was all 
a-horseback ; he lit off of his horse and got behind a httle 
woodpile, and kep' his horse before him to stop the bullets ; 
but the Grangerfords stayed on their horses and capered 
around the old man, and peppered away at him, and he 
peppered away at them. Him and his horse both went 
home pretty leaky and crippled, but the Grangerfords had 
to be fetched home, and one of 'em was dead, and another 
died the next day. No, sir ; if a body's out hunting for 
cowards, he don't want to fool away any time amongst them 
Shepherdsons, becuz they don't breed any of that kindT 

And Huck himself, from his lookout in a tree, was to see 
Buck Grangerford and another young man shot to death 
by the merciless Shepherdsons, one of whose number had 
run off in the night with Colonel Grangerford's younger 
daughter 

Mr. Clemens's theme of savage and absurd family wars 
in the South, while treated in his own unique and satirical 
way, is suggestive of the annihilating contest described by 
John T. Fox, Jr., in his "Cumberland Vendetta," and of 
the remorseless hatred of the Cayce family for Micajah 
Green, as portrayed so dramatically by Miss Murfree in 
"The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains." 

Two sublime types of professional humbugs, such as 
must now and then visit gullible small towns along the 



1 62 Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley 

Mississippi in the Southwest, are the " Duke of Bridge- 
water " and the " King, " whom Huck, under mental protest, 
rescued from an outraged community. The King was 
about seventy, with a bald head and very gray whiskers. 
He wore an old battered-up slouch hat, a greasy blue 
woolen shirt, and ragged old blue jeans breeches stuffed into 
his boot-tops, and home-knit "galluses," — or rather only 
one ; and when rescued he and his companion, the Duke, 
were each carrying a " big, fat, ratty-looking " carpet-bag. 
They proved to be strangers to each other, and in ex- 
plaining the cause of his trouble the Duke said to his new- 
found acquaintance : " Well, I'd been selHng an article to 
take the tartar off the teeth, — and it does take it off, too, 
and gener'ly the enamel along with it, — but I stayed about 
one night longer than I ought to, and was just in the act 
of sHding out when I ran across you on the trail this side 
of town. . . . That's the whole yarn, what's yourn?" 
To which the King replied, with a little more detail : 
" Well, I'd ben a-runnin' a little temperance revival thar 
'bout a week, and was the pet of the women-folks, big and 
little, for I was makin' it mighty warm for the rummies, I 
tell you, and takin' as much as five or six dollars a night — 
ten cents a head, children and niggers free — and business 
a-growin' all the time, when somehow or another a Httle 
report got around last night that I had a way of puttin' 
in my time with a private jug on the sly. A nigger rousted 
me out this mornin' and told me the people was getherin' 
on the quiet with their dogs and horses, and they'd be 
along pretty soon and give me 'bout half an hour's start, 
and then run me down if they could ; and if they got me 
they'd tar and feather me and ride me on a rail, sure. I 
didn't wait for no breakfast — I warn't hungry." 



"The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" 163 

It seemed feasible that these two "professionals " should 
from this time forth reenforce each other's talents, the Duke 
of Bridge water (the King called it " Bilge water ") ex- 
plaining first what his " hne " was : " Jour printer by trade ; 
do a little in patent medicines; theater-actor — tragedy, 
you know ; take a turn to mesmerism and phrenology when 
there's a chance; teach singing — geography school for a 
change ; sHng a lecture sometimes — oh, I do lots of things 
— most anything that comes handy, so it ain't work." 
-The King then explained his " lay " : " I've done consider- 
able in the doctoring way in my time. Layin' on o' hands is 
my best holt — for cancer and paralysis, and sich things ; 
and I k'n tell a fortune pretty good when I've got somebody 
along to find out the facts for me. Preachin's my line, too, 
and workin' camp-meetin's and missionaryin' around." 

Learning that a camp-meeting was being held in the 
woods some two miles back from the little river town near 
which the raft was tied up for the day, the King " allowed " 
that he would go and " work it " for all it was worth, and 
permitted Huck to go with him. The first shed they came 
to contained a preacher that was " lining " out a hymn. 
He lined out two lines and everybody sang them ; and then 
he lined out two more for them to sing, and so on indefi- 
nitely. The people grew more and more animated, and 
sang louder and louder ; and toward the end some began to 
groan and some to shout. The preacher was of the loud- 
voiced, hortatory, unctuous type that Mr. Eggleston has 
illustrated in " Rev. Mr. Bosaw " and Miss Murfree in 
" Brother Jake Tobin." In the language of Huck : " He went 
weaving first to one side of the platform and then the other, 
and then a-leaning down over the front of it, with his arms 
and his body going all the time, and shouting his words out 



164 Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley 

with all his might ; and every now and then he would hold 
up his Bible and spread it open and kind of pass it around 
this way and that, shouting, * It's the brazen serpent in the 
wilderness ! Look upon it and live ! ' and people would 
shout out, ' Glory ! — k-2i-inen ! ' And so he went on, and 
the people groaning and crying and saying Am^n : * Oh, 
come to the mourners' bench ! come, black with sin ! 
{a??ien /) come, sick and sore ! {amen /) come, lame and 
halt and blind ! {amen /) come, pore and needy, sunk in 
shame ! {a-a-men !) Come, all that's worn and soiled and 
suffering ! — come with a broken spirit ! come with a con- 
trite heart ! come in your rags and sin and dirt ! the waters 
that cleanse is free, the door of heaven stands open — oh, 
enter in and be at rest ! {A-a-men, glory, glory hallelujah /) ' " 
The shouting and crying, as reported by Huck, became so 
great that the preacher's words could no longer be distin- 
guished. People rose in all parts of the crowd and made 
their way by sheer strength to the mourners' bench, with the 
tears streaming down their faces ; and when the mourners 
had filled the front benches in a throng, they sang and 
shouted and flung themselves down on the straw, "just crazy 
and wild." 

By playing the part of a converted pirate who had been 
robbed the night before, and was now returning to the 
Indian Ocean to convert his brother pirates, the King 
was able to carry back to the raft some eighty-seven dollars 
and seventy-five cents which he had "gathered in " at the 
camp-meeting by a skillful appeal from the platform and 
passing the hat for a collection. He promised to say to 
every pirate converted, " Don't you thank me, don't you 
give me no credit ; it all belongs to them dear people in 
Pokeville camp- meeting, natural brothers and benefactors 



"The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" 165 

of the race, and that dear preacher there, the truest friend 
a pirate ever had ! " And the King had brought back with 
him, too, a three-gallon jug of whisky, which he had found 
under a wagon when he was starting for the raft through the 
woods. To use Huck's report : " The King said, take it all 
around, it laid over any day he'd ever put in in the mission- 
arying Hne. He said it warn't no use talking, heathens don't 
amount to shucks alongside of pirates to work a camp-meet- 
ing with." 

A truly Southern provincial type is the fierce-natured, 
cool-headed Colonel Sherborne who shot down in cold 
blood the drunken, good-natured, but abusive Boggs ; and 
when the mob threatened him with lynching, his accurate 
knowledge of them was shown by his sudden appearance on 
the porch of his home and his cool defiance, characteristic- 
ally reenforced by a shot gun : " The idea of yon lynching 
anybody ! It's amusing. The idea of you thinking you had 
pluck enough to lynch a 7nan! . . . You didn't want to 
come. . . . But if only /z^^-a-man — like Buck Harkness, 
there — shouts ' Lynch him ! lynch him!' you're afraid to 
back down — afraid you'll be found out to be what you 
are — cowai'ds — and so you raise a yell, and hang your- 
selves on to that half-a-man's coat-tail, and come raging up 
here, swearing what big things you're going to do. The 
pitifulest thing out is a mob ; that's what an army is — a 
mob ; they don't fight with courage that's born in them, 
but with courage that's borrowed from their mass, and from 
their officers. But a mob without any man at the head 
of it is beneath pitifulness. Now the thing iox you to do is 
droop your tails and go home and crawl in a hole. . . . Now 
leave — and take your half-a-man with you." As the 
Colonel tossed his gun up across his left arm and cocked 



1 66 Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley 

it, the mob " washed back sudden/' broke apart, and dashed 
into a wild run, with the " half-a-man " bringing up the rear. 
Old Uncle Silas Phelps, the easy-going, inconsequential 
farmer and preacher, who had a little log church down back 
of the plantation and "never charged nothing for his 
preaching, and it was worth it, too " ; the generous-souled, 
credulous, and motherly Aunt Sally ; and the versatile, un- 
conscionable Tom Sawyer, who insisted on freeing in formal 
and adventurous style the negro Jim that was already free, 
— these are additional types in " Huckleberry Finn " that 
Mr. Clemens has characterized with easy and inimitable 
touch. In fact, much of the characterization in the book 
seems wrought out of the closest familiarity with those 
strange, crude, virile types that belonged to life along the 
Mississippi half a century ago. 



CHAPTER XIII 

"THE HOOSIER SCHOOLMASTER" BY EDWARD 
EGGLESTON 

In writing a few years ago, in the Forum^ on the " For- 
mative Influences " of his own life, Mr. Eggleston remarked 
discriminatingly : " If I were a dispassionate critic, and 
were set to judge my own novels as the writings of another, 
I should have to say that what distinguishes them from other 
works of fiction is the prominence which they give to social 
conditions ; that the individual characters are here treated 
to a greater degree than elsewhere as parts of a study of a 
society — as in some sense the logical results of the environ- 
ment. Whatever may be the rank assigned to these stories 
as works of literary art, they will always have a certain value 
as materials for the student of social history. Not that in 
writing them any such purpose was consciously present ; it 
is what we do without exactly intending it that is most char- 
acteristic." 

The old-time residents of Indiana have themselves ac- 
cepted "The Hoosier Schoolmaster" as essentially true to 
the Hfe and manners of Southern Indiana half a century ago. 
The sordid, brutal, lawless West of the days before the rail- 
roads, with its hardness and wickedness as well as its courage 
and heroic industry, Mr. Eggleston seems to have known 
and understood. And it is not at all surprising, for his own 
life in Indiana on a farm and as a Methodist " circuit rider," 

167 



1 68 Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley 

and also on the frontier in Minnesota in search of health, 
gave him a vital closeness to primitive types among the pri- 
vations and struggles that were a necessary part of the earlier 
history of the West. In truth, so close a reflection of provin- 
cial life under such conditions is not entirely captivating, hav- 
ing a certain repulsiveness ; yet it has great interest because 
it is a transcript, and because it is often intensely dramatic. 
Few famihes could be less attractive to a young and some- 
what educated man than was that of " old Jack Means," the 
school trustee to whom the prospective "schoolmaster" ap- 
plied for a place as teacher of the " Flat Crick " district 
school. Old Jack was not encouraging the young aspirant : 
" You might teach a summer school, when nothin' but chil- 
dren come. But I 'low it takes a right smart man to be 
schoolmaster in Flat Crick in the winter. They'd pitch you 
out of doors, sonny, neck and heels, afore Christmas." 
" Bud " Means, the elder son, was meanwhile measuring the 
applicant by the standard of muscle, with that amiable look in 
his eye " which a big dog turns on a little one before shak- 
ing him." Bud's sister, in the doorway, was giggling over 
the prospect of seeing their large brindle bulldog *' take 
hold " of the applicant for the school, when the old man 
himself called off the dog, remarking as he did so : " Ef you 
think you kin trust your hide in Flat Crick schoolhouse I 
ha'n't got no 'bjection. But ef you git hcked don't come 
on us. Flat Crick don't pay no 'nsurance, you bet." He 
then suggestively added that the last schoolmaster carried a 
black eye for a month. However, Ralph Hartsook, the 
applicant, was given permission by Mr. Means to begin work 
at the school, and invited to stay over Sunday with the 
Means family, in the process of "boardin' roun'." Bud 
Means thereupon remarked reassuringly, with reference to 



"The Hoosier Schoolmaster" 169 

the threatening attitude of the dog, " Ef Bull once takes a 
holt, heaven and yarth can't make him let go." 

After the first few days of discouraging experience and a 
deliberate effort to assume something of the bulldog's per- 
tinacity, the young schoolmaster had this judgment passed 
upon him by Mr. Pete Jones, an influential neighbor of Mr. 
Means : " Don't beheve he'll do. Don't thrash enough. 
Boys won't Tarn 'less you thrash 'em, says I. Leastways, 
mine won't. Lay it on good is what I says to a master. 
Lay it on good. . . . Lickin' and I'arnin' goes together. 
No lickin', no Tarnin', says I." 

One morning before school, while sitting on the broad 
hearth smoking her cob pipe, old " Miss " Means grew confi- 
dential to the young schoolmaster, letting him know some- 
thing of the family's early history, — how on her advice her 
husband had invested years before in " Congress " bottom 
land at a dollar and a quarter an acre : " I says to my ole 
man, ' Jack,' says I, ' Jack, do you git a plenty while you're 
a-gittin*. Git a plenty while you're a-gittin',' says I, ' fer 
'twon't never be no cheaper'n 'tis now,' and it ha'n't been ; 
I knowed 'twouldn't." Taking the pipe from her mouth to 
indulge in a reminiscent chuckle at her own financial shrewd- 
ness, Mrs. Means continued : "Jack didn't git rich by hard 
work. Bless you, no ! Not him. That a'n't his way. Hard 
work a'n't, you know. 'Twas that air six hundred dollars 
he got along of me, all salted down into Flat Crick bottoms 
at a dollar and a quarter a' acre, and 'twas my sayin', ' git 
a plenty while you're a-gittin',' as done it." And then 
Mrs. Means diplomatically suggested that the man who got 
her daughter " Mirandy " — a weak-eyed and weak-headed 
giggler— would do well—" Flat Crick land's wuth nigh upon 
a hundred a' acre." 



lyo Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley 

The most important social event in the Flat Crick school 
district was the spelling-school. Every family furnished a 
candle, and there were yellow "dips" and white dips smok- 
ing and flaring. And there was much ogling and giggling, 
flirting and courting. " I 'low," said Mr. Means, the prin- 
cipal trustee, " I 'low our friend the Square is jest the man 
to boss this 'ere consarn to-night. If nobody objects, I'll 
app'int him. Come, Square, don't be bashful." The Squire 
came to the front, and the new schoolmaster made an in- 
ventory of his appearance. He wore an aged swallowtail 
coat somewhat too small for him, a pair of black gloves 
(gloves in Flat Crick were an anomaly) ; a dirty, waxen-col- 
ored wig, which required frequent adjustment to the Squire's 
smooth pate and was of the wrong color ; a semicircular row 
of whiskers dyed an impossible dead black ; a pair of spec- 
tacles with tortoise-shell rim ; a glass eye differing in color 
from its natural mate, and perpetually turning in and out ; 
and a set of badly-fitting false teeth. 

In accepting the honor of presiding, Squire Hawkins re- 
marked, with a characteristic twist of his wig : " I feel as if 
I could be grandiloquent on this interesting occasion, but 
raley I must forego any such exertions. It is spelling you 
want. Spelling is the corner-stone, the grand underlying 
subterfuge, of a good eddication. I put the spellin'-book 
prepared by the great Daniel Webster alongside the Bible. 
I do, raley. I think I may put it ahead of the Bible. For 
if it wurn't fer spellin'-books and sich occasions as these, 
where would the Bible be? I should like to know. The 
man who got up, who compounded this work of inextricable 
valoo, was a benefactor to the whole human race or any 
other." Hereupon the Squire's spectacles fell off, he gave 
his wig another twist, and apprehensively felt of his glass eye. 



"The Hoosier Schoolmaster" 171 

In the contest Jim Phillips, a tall, lank, " stoop-shoul- 
dered " fellow, who had spelled down the last three masters, 
was pitted against the new schoolmaster. Jim spelled as if 
he "knew more about the spelling-book than old Noah 
Webster himself." It was done eagerly, confidently, and 
brilliantly, and the odds, in the eyes of the company, were 
all in Phillips's favor, — especially since the young school- 
master spelled with a certain hesitation and deliberateness 
that seemed to argue lack of confidence, but really meant 
only a dogged determination to win. But " theodoUte " 
proved too much for the redoubtable Jim ; and as Ralph, 
the schoolmaster, spelled it slowly and correctly, the excite- 
ment was so great that the spelling was suspended for a few 
minutes. *' He's powerful smart is the master," said old 
Jack Means, the school trustee, exultingly. " He'll beat the 
whole kit and tuck of 'em afore he's through. I know'd he 
was smart. That's the reason I tuck him." "Yaas, but 
he don't lick enough. Not nigh," answered Pete Jones. 
" No lickin', no I'arnin', says I." 

But what was the excitement when Hannah, the bound 
girl at old Jack Means's, stood alone, opposed to the school- 
master on the other side, and seemed to be easily holding 
her own. The sympathy of everybody went over to her 
side ; indeed, even the schoolmaster, as he looked at her 
fine, sensitive face, flushing and shining with interest, and 
saw upon her the quickening effect of applause and sym- 
pathy, began to be smitten with a peculiar feeling of admira- 
tion, and he no longer craved a victory. And finally, when 
the schoohnaster went down before the serried ranks of new 
words that the Squire had found outside the spelling-book, and 
Hannah spelled the word he missed, the chmax was dramatic 
enough to satisfy every one's sense of the unexpected. 



172 Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley 

One Saturday afternoon the schoolmaster, in following an 
unknown path through the woods from Squire Hawkins's, 
came upon Rocky Hollow and the secluded home of old 
John Pearson, the one-legged basket-maker, who in his in- 
stinctive kindliness had given a home to Shocky, the young 
brother of Hannah the bound girl, whose mother had been 
obliged to go to the poorhouse. Squire Hawkins's daughter 
Martha was already there on the schoolmaster's arrival, and 
the old rheumatic wife of Pearson impulsively praised her 
to the schoolmaster for her thoughtfulness in coming tO' 
see them so often. Miss Martha blushingly said she came 
because Rocky Hollow reminded her of a place she used 
to know "at the East," and because Mr. and Mrs. Pear- 
son also reminded her of people she knew "at the East." 
In fact, Miss Hawkins had a characteristic way of beginning 
a sentence, " When I was to Bosting," etc. 

The old basket- maker was a pretended cynic in his phi- 
losophy of life ; and a favorite judgment of his on the 
actions and motives of mankind in general, including him- 
self, was put in this laconic form, " We're all selfish akordin' 
to my tell." When Shocky protested that the basket- maker 
wasn't selfish when he sat up every night for two weeks with 
Shocky's sick father, the old man insisted : " Yes, I was, too ! 
Your father was a miserable Britisher. Fd fit redcoats in 
the war of eighteen-twelve, and lost my leg by one of 'em 
stickin' his dog-on'd bagonet right through it, that night at 
Lundy's Lane ; but my messmate killed him though, which 
is a satisfaction to think on. And I didn't like your father 
'cause he was a Britisher. But ef he'd a died right here in 
this free country, 'thout nobody to give him a drink of 
water, blamed ef I wouldn't a been ashamed to set on the 
platform at a Fourth of July barbecue, and to hold up my 



"The Hoosier Schoolmaster" 173 

wooden leg fer to make the boys cheer ! That was the self- 
ishest thing I ever done. We're all selfish akordm' to my 
tell." His final compHment to Miss Hawkins, their sym- 
pathetic caller, was genuine though somewhat paradoxical, 
** Sometimes I'd think you was real benev'lent ef I didn't 
know we was all selfish." 

The schoolmaster found one Sunday that his only way of 
hearing preaching that day at Bethel Meetin'-house was to 
ride on the " clay-bank " mare, with Miss Hawkins up 
behind. And so, though it was somewhat against his lik- 
ing, he went double ; and after a splashing, muddy ride 
he took his place on the men's side of the '' hewed-log " 
church to listen to the sounding words of Rev. Mr. Bosaw, 
of the " Hardshell Baptist " school, sometimes known in 
that region as the "Whisky Baptists," and the "Forty- 
gallon Baptists." Their preachers had a habit of singing 
their sermons out for two or three hours at a stretch, and 
they were notorious for their illiteracy, not to say frequent 
drunkenness and viciousness. Mr. Eggleston vouches for 
the accuracy of the following sermon, although he says 
that it is impossible to give a picture of the preacher's 
rich red nose, his seesawing gestures, his nasal resonance, 
his sniffle, and his melancholy minor key : " My respec- 
tive hearers-ah, you see-ah as how-ah as my tex'-ah says 
that the ox-ah knoweth his owner-ah, and-ah the ass-ah his 
master's crib-ah. A-h-h ! Now, my respective hearers-ah, 
they're a mighty sight of resemblance-ah atewxt men-ah and 
oxen-ah, bekase-ah, you see, men-ah is mighty like oxen-ah. 
Fer they's a tremengious defference-ah atwext deiferent 
oxen-ah, jest as thar is atwext defferent men-ah; fer the 
ox knoweth-ah his owner-ah, and the ass-ah his master's 
crib-ah. Now, my respective hearers-ah, you all know-ah 



174 Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley 

that your humble speaker-ah has got-ah jest the best yoke 
of steers-ah in this township-ah. They a'n't no sech steers 
as them air two of mine-ah in this whole kedentry-ah. 
Them crack oxen over at CHfty-ah ha'n't a patchin' to 
mine-ah. Fer the ox knoweth his owner-ah, and the 
ass-ah his master's crib-ah. 

" Now, my respective hearers, they's a right smart sight 
of defference-ah atwext them air two oxen-ah, jest like they 
is atwext defferent men-ah. Fer-ah. [here the speaker 
grew vehement in voice and gesticulation, out of all pro- 
portion to the importance of the subject-matter] fer-ah, 
you see-ah, when I go out-ah in the mornin'-ah to 
yoke-ah up-ah them air steers-ah, and I says-ah, 'Wo, 
Berry-ah ! IVo, Berry-ah ! Wo Berry- ah,' why Berry-ah 
jests stands stock still-ah and don't hardly breathe-ah while 
I put on the yoke-ah and put in the bow-ah, and put 
in the key- ah, fer, my brethering-ah and sistering-ah, the 
ox knoweth his owner-ah, and the ass-ah his master's crib-ah. 
Hal-le-lu-ger-ah ! 

" But-ah, my hearers-ah, but-ah when I stand at t'other 
eend of the yoke-ah, and say : ^ Come, Buck-ah ! Come, 
Buck-ah f Come, Buck-ah ! COME, BUCK-AH ! ' why, 
what do you think-ah ? Buck-ah, that ornery ole Buck-ah, 
'stid of comin' right along-ah and puttin' his neck under-ah, 
acts jest hke some men-ah what is fools-ah. Buck-ah jest 
kinder sorter stands off-ah, and kinder sorter puts his 
head down-ah this 'ere way-ah, and kinder looks mad-ah, 
and says, ' Boo-oo-oo-OO-ah ! ' " As a preacher Rev. Mr. 
Bosaw is in a class with the camp-meeting type in " Huckle- 
berry Finn " and with Brother Jake Tobin in " The Prophet 
of the Great Smoky Mountains." 

Unfortunately for the schoolmaster, Bud Means, the 



"The Hoosier Schoolmaster*' 175 

young giant, who was deeply in love with Martha Hawkins, 
had watched with fiercely jealous eye the arrival at the 
church of Ralph and Miss Hawkins on the same horse ; 
and as Bud had previously seen the schoolmaster and Miss 
Hawkins together at the Squire's home. Bud thought he 
recognized in him a deliberate and dangerous rival for the 
hand of her who had been " to Bosting." Little did Bud 
realize that the heart of the schoolmaster was set on the 
fair, pathetic face of Hannah, the bound girl at Bud's own 
home. 

In the schoolhouse one day Bud plainly told the master 
that the latter would have to leave " these 'ere diggins " or 
get a thrashing. At the order of Bud, the schoolmaster 
took off his coat preparatory to a " lickin' " ; and the pluck 
of Ralph in the presence of such burly and superior strength 
as Bud's stirred the latter's admiration. " Well, you're the 
grittiest feller I ever did see, and ef you'd jest kep' off of 
my ground I wouldn't a touched you. But I a'n't agoin' to 
be cut out by no feller a livin' 'thout thrashin' him in an 
inch of his life. You see I wanted to git out of this Flat 
Crick way. We're a low-lived set here in Flat Crick. . . . 
And when you come I says. There's one as'll help me. And 
what did you do with your book-l'arnin' and town manners 
but start right out to git away the gal that I'd picked out, 
when I'd picked her out kase I thought, not bein' Flat Crick 
born herself, she might help a feller to do better ! Now I 
won't let nobody cut me out without givin' 'em the best 
thrashin' it's in these 'ere arms to give." 

When Bud's mistake became known, and also his sister 
Miranda's misleading report that her brother was courting 
Hannah, the bound girl. Bud's indignation and amazement 
knew no bounds : " Mirandy ! Thunder ! You believed 



176 Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley 

Mirandy ! Well ! Now, looky here, Mr. Hartsook, ef you 
was to say that my sister lied I'd lick you till yer hide 
wouldn't hold shucks. But / say, atwixt you and me and 
the gate-post, don't you never believe nothing that Mirandy 
Means says. Her and marm has set theirselves like fools to 
git you." And then Bud and the schoolmaster put on 
their coats and shook hands in what proved to be a very 
loyal alliance. 

It was only a few minutes before Bud, who had left 
the school-house, reentered and remarked with much em- 
barrassment : ''I don't know whether you're a Hardshell or 
a Softshell, or a Methodist, or a CampbelHte, or a New Light, 
or a United Brother, or a Millerite, or what-not. But I 
says, the man what can do the clean thing by a ugly feller 
like me, and stick to it, when I was jest ready to eat him 
up, is a kind of a man to tie to." In fact. Bud was im- 
pressed by the schoolmaster's honest, heroic, self-sacrificing 
religious spirit, and wanted to turn over a new leaf. So 
that when he heard from the schoolmaster's own lips that 
the man of Nazareth was " a sort of a Flat Creeker himself" 
and that one could be a follower of His without being bap- 
tized. Bud expressed his immediate intention of putting in 
his "best licks for Jesus Christ," — thus starting in the little 
log schoolhouse a genuine church mihtant. And Bud's " first 
lick " was against Pete Jones, who struck little Shocky with 
his hog-drover's whip. Pete could only crawl away like a 
whipped puppy, muttering that he felt " consid'able shuck 
up like." 

Bud's next ''Hck" was his effort to save the one-legged, 
outspoken old basket-maker, John Pearson, whose knowl- 
edge of a robbery in the neighborhood, involving some 
prominent citizens hke Pete Jones and Dr. Small, had 



"The Hoosier Schoolmaster" 177 

brought upon him the imminent danger of being tarred and 
feathered. It took a " council of war " to convince the old 
soldier that it was the part of valor as well as of discretion 
to leave Flat Creek without delay. " No, I won't leave. 
You see I jest won't. What would Gin'ral Winfield Scott 
say ef he knew that one of them as fit at Lundy's Lane 
backed out, retreated, run fer fear of a passel of thieves? 
No, sir ; me and the old flintlock will Hve and die together." 
But, finally, seeing the futihty of a stubborn delay, the old 
basket-maker was glad to take his secret departure in the 
night on the back of Bud's roan colt, while Bud himself 
trudged along by his side six miles to Buckeye Run to bring 
back the colt. 

Bud's next " best lick " was in his effort to save little 
Shocky — whom ''God forgot" — from being bound out, 
like his sister Hannah. And this was achieved by the help 
of the same colt and the schoolmaster, who rode at dawn, 
with Shocky in his arms, to Lewisburg, and found a refuge 
for him there with Miss Nancy Sawyer, the old maid who 
was a sort of benediction to the community. As the school- 
master took the feverish little boy in his arms, for the long 
ride to Lewisburg, Shocky looked up in his face and said : 
" You see, Mr. Hartsook, I thought God had forgot. But 
he ha'n't." 

Bud Means's secret notification to the schoolmaster to 
flee from the community, the minds of which had been 
subtly instigated against him ; Ralph's finding Squire Haw- 
kins in Clifty, a neighboring village, and asking the Squire 
to arrest and try him there ; and the public trial in the large 
schoolhouse in Clifty, all of whose inhabitants, as well as 
those of Flat Creek, attended, — bring the narrative to the 
various phases of the strangely conflicting testimony given 

N 



lyS Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley 

in the trial. The testimony of Walter Johnson, a medical 
student in Dr. Small's office, was pecuharly uncertain, due 
to the fact that the weak and wavering Johnson, who had 
been an eye-witness of the robbery and was sworn to secrecy 
by Dr. Small, the actual head of an organized gang of 
thieves, — had been taken by the astute Bud to hear the 
Rev. Mr. Soden (the scoffers called him " Brother Sodom "). 
" Brother Sodom's " sulphurous preaching had so aroused 
the conscience of young Johnson that, on the witness stand, 
despite the intimidating glances of Dr. Small, he had made 
a full confession, exonerating the schoolmaster and directly 
implicating the doctor and the Joneses. Through Bud's 
influence, also. Hank Banta, the old-time enemy of the 
schoolmaster, confessed that his own testimony had been 
false ; and even old Jack Means, the school trustee, who had 
always had a warm side for the master, proposed three 
cheers for him at the conclusion of the trial. But Mrs. 
Means gave it as her opinion that " Jack Means allers wuz a 
fool ! " 

Old Jack Means in his function of school trustee. Bud, 
as a founder of the church mihtant, and Rev. Mr. Bosaw, 
the unctuous " Hardshell " preacher ; the pathetic and poetic 
little Shocky, the pale and patient bound girl, Hannah, and 
the giggling '' Mirandy " ; the one-legged basket-maker who 
" fit " at Lundy's Lane and believed in the general selfishness 
of mankind; the Squire whose eyes turned different ways 
and who was an authority on spelling ; and the strenuous 
Httle schoolmaster himself, — these figures for a long time to 
come will be associated in the minds of the reading world 
with the crude and lawless conditions of pioneer life in 
Southern Indiana. 



CHAPTER XIV 

" MAIN-TRAVELED ROADS " BY HAMLIN GARLAND 

" Main-Traveled Roads " has a significant dedication. 
It reads : " To my father and mother, whose half-century 
pilgrimage on the main-traveled road of hfe has brought 
them only toil and deprivation, this book of stories is dedi- 
cated by a son to whom every day brings a deepening sense 
of his parents' silent heroism." In fact, the strenuous 
early life of Mr. Garland himself, in Wisconsin and on the 
prairies of Iowa, gave him certain hard and vivid experi- 
ences that later made him so sympathetic with the grim and 
tedious lives of a farmer's family in the great Northwest. 

A writer in the Atlantic Monthly, in speaking of the effect 
produced upon him by the book under consideration, said : 
" The best proof of the solid merit of ' Main-Traveled 
Roads ' is that, in spite of all, it convinces the reader, willy- 
nilly, of its general fidelity to fact, and hfts him off his criti- 
cal feet by its sheer brute force. ... It shows strikingly 
what may be done by strong native talent, working with the 
help of a single sound formula for effective composition; 
for here most emphatically Mr. Garland has written of what 
he knows. The book is unique in American literature ; 
passionate, vivid, written with absolute certainty of touch, 
native and virile as the red man." And Mr. Howells, also 
bearing witness to the essential truthfulness of the book, 
wrote in Harper'' s Magazine : " These stories are full of the 

179 



i8o Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley 

bitter and burning dust, the foul and trampled slush, of the 
common avenues of life, the life of the men who hopelessly 
and cheerlessly make the wealth that enriches the alien and 
the idler, and impoverishes the producer." 

In the opening of the first sketch in " Main-Traveled 
Roads," called "A Branch Road," one gets a fine sense of the 
freedom and sweetness of that hour in the country when the 
night is losing its sway, — the grass was crisp with frost, 
the air was stimulating and resonant, the autumn maples 
were flaming amid the still green oaks, and above the tim- 
ber belt in the east rose swiftly " a vast dome of pale undaz- 
zling gold." "In the windless September dawn a voice 
went ringing clear and sweet, a man's voice, singing a cheap 
and common air." Such is the note of spontaneous joy 
breathed out by nature and human nature in unison, — in 
what suggestive contrast to the later depression and grimness 
of the story ! 

The singing voice was that of a young man on his way to 
help a neighbor do his " thrashing," a time of the intensest 
work for the farmer, who is then getting into final shape the 
product of his spring and summer's labor. As Will Hannan, 
carrying his pitchfork, came in sight of his neighbors, he 
could see the horses in a circle, hitched to the ends of the 
six sweeps, and the great red and gold-striped threshing 
machine standing among the stacks. Will and his rival, Ed 
Kinney, took their places on the highest stack, and the 
voice of big David McTurg, the owner of the thresher, was 
heard calling out as the men raised the long stacker into 
position. "Come, come, every sucker of yeh, git hold 
o' something. All ready." And then, to use the words of 
Mr. Garland himself in describing this typical, strenuous 
phase of Western farm Hfe : " Boo-oo-oo-oom, Boo-woo-woo- 



" Main-Traveled Roads " 1 8 1 

oom-oom-ow-owm, yarr,yarr ! The whirling cylinder boomed, 
roared, and snarled as it rose in speed. At last, when its 
tone became a rattling yell, David nodded to the pitchers 
and rasped his hands together. The sheaves began to fall 
from the stack ; the band-cutter, knife in hand, slashed the 
bands in twain; and the feeder, with easy, majestic move- 
ment, gathered them under his arm and rolled them out into 
an even belt of entering wheat, on which the cylinder tore 
with its smothered, ferocious snarl." 

It was only the night before that Agnes Dingman, whose 
father was having his wheat threshed, had given Will Han- 
nan an assurance of her love ; and so he worked steadily on 
the stack beside Ed Kinney with a secure sense of triumph 
that made him perfectly happy. But Agnes's open prefer- 
ence for himself at dinner-time, and her pleasant, smiling 
ways with some of the other men, in some way irritated and 
maddened the lover in his peculiarly sensitive mood ; and 
later he was almost plunged into a quarrel with one of the 
threshers, because of remarks about Agnes's evident liking 
for him. He worked savagely on during the rest of the day, 
resenting, with a sense of ownership in her, every pleasant 
attention she received from the other men. Even when she 
came out near his stack, looking very pretty in her straw 
hat, and seeking an explanation for his strange attitude 
toward her, he worked fiercely on, with his hat pulled over 
his eyes, and with barely a notice of her. At the end of 
the day, when all stayed for supper at the Dingmans, Will 
refused an invitation to wait and eat with the rest, but turned 
away hungry and tired, — " so tired he stumbled and so un- 
happy he wept." 

It was another beautiful dawn, and Will was busily wash- 
ing the mud from his brother's carriage, preparatory to 



1 82 Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley 

taking his sweetheart Agnes to the county fair, — an arrange- 
ment to that effect having been made with her the Sunday 
before. He had not seen her, however, since Monday, — 
the day of the threshing, — and it was now Thursday. He 
sang at his work ; " he had regained his real self, and, hav- 
ing passed through a bitter period of shame, was now joyous 
with anticipation of forgiveness. He looked forward to the 
day, with its chances of doing a thousand Httle things to 
show his regret and his love." 

Willj in his best suit, sprang into the carriage, after an 
early breakfast, and started off with the lively colts for 
Agnes Dingman's home, where he had arranged to meet her 
at eight o'clock. But on the way, by an unfortunate acci- 
dent, he was delayed till ten o'clock. He imagined his 
sweetheart as tearful and pouting, and as sitting by the win- 
dow with her hat and gloves on, waiting for him after the 
others had gone. Alas for human illusions ! when the lover 
drove up, no smiling or tearful face waited at the window ; the 
house was silent, and the curtains down. Something rose 
chokingly in his throat; he called "Agnes," and announced 
that he was " here at last." There was no response. Sud- 
denly an old man came round the corner, grinning as he 
came, and said, " She ain't here. She's gone." To Will's 
amazed inquiry, "Who'd she go with?" the old man an- 
swered, with a malicious grin, " Ed Kinney. I guess your 
goose is cooked." And this was the expected sweetness of 
reconciliation with Agnes ! He lashed his horses into a 
run ; his face was white and his teeth were set ; and when 
once more at home he wrote this savage, brutal letter to the 
gentle girl that really loved him : " If you want to go to hell 
with Ed Kinney, you can. I won't say a word. That's 
where he'll take you. You won't see me again." He knew 



" Main-Traveled Roads " 183 

it would tear and sear an innocent, happy heart, but that 
thought was a wicked satisfaction to him as he rode away in 
the train to the South. 

Seven years of hard but successful Hfe among the chffs 
and treeless swells of the Southwest, and Will Hannan was 
back in his boyhood home, among the trees and rustUng 
cornfields and cattle pastures of Southern Wisconsin. The 
very crickets and peacefully feeding cattle were dear to him ; 
and the softened sound of the distant reaper seemed Hke 
" the hum of a bluebottle fly buzzing heedlessly about his 
ears." Retrospective and repentant, he was filled, with a 
sort of strange sadness and despair. As he waited by the 
roadside for the passing of a drove of cattle he recognized 
in the hard-featured old driver the father of his early rival, 
Ed Kinney. Will innocently inquired of the old man the 
whereabouts of Will Hannan. " WiUiam ? Oh ! he's a bad 
aig — he lit out f r the West somewhere. He was a hard 
boy. He stole a hatful o' my plums once. He left home 
kind o' sudden. He ! he ! I s'pose he was purty well cut 
up jest about them days." The old man chuckled and con- 
tinued : " Well, y' see, they was both courtin' Agnes then, 
an' my son cut WilHam out. Then William he lit out f'r 
the West, Arizony, 'r California, 'r somewhere out West. 
Never been back sence." 

Will walked on until he came to the old home of Agnes, 
his former sweetheart. " The barn had been moved away, 
the garden plowed up, and the house, turned into a gran- 
ary, stood with boards nailed across its dusty, cobwebbed 
windows. The tears started into the man's eyes. ... In 
the face of this house the seven years that he had last lived 
stretched away into a wild waste of time. It stood as a 
symbol of his wasted, ruined hfe. It was personal, inti- 



184 Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley 

mately personal, this decay of her home." And his mind 
reverted to that last impression of the Dingman home — 
the roar of the threshing machine, the whistle of the driver, 
the shouts of the men, and the streaming lamplight as he 
turned away from the door, " tired, hungry, sullen with rage 
and jealousy. Oh, if he had only had the courage of a 
man ! " But his old sweetheart — he must see her just once 
more. 

The next morning Will drove up to her home. It had 
been his own home until it passed from his mother's posses- 
sion into the hands of old Kinney. There he had been 
born, and there his mother had toiled for thirty years. It 
was a strange meeting — this coming together of old-time 
lovers in a quick recognition that love was not yet dead. 
Will explained his identity to Ed's old father and mother, 
the latter exclaiming : " Dew tell ! I want 'o know ! Wal, I 
never ! An' you're my little Willy boy who ust 'o be in my 
class? Well ! Well ! W'y, pa, ain't he growed tall ! Grew 
handsome tew. I ust to think he was a dretful humly boy ; 
but my sakes, that mustache — " 

But what a change in the old Agnes, with the dimples and 
the sunny hair ! She was now plainly a farmer's house 
drudge. " She was worn and wasted incredibly. The blue 
of her eyes seemed dimmed and faded by weeping, and the 
old-time scarlet of her lips had been washed away. The 
sinews of her neck showed painfully when she turned her 
head, and her trembling hands were worn, discolored, and 
lumpy at the joints." As she moved about, getting dinner 
at the demand of the old people, Will listened gloomily to 
the " clack " of the old man, and observed the details of the 
room. It was a poor little " sitting room," with furniture 
" worn and shapeless ; hardly a touch of pleasant color, save 



" Main-Traveled Roads " 185 

here and there a httle bit of Agnes's handiwork. The 
lounge, covered with cahco, was rickety ; the rocking-chair 
matched it, and the carpet of rags was patched and darned 
with twine in twenty places. Everywhere was the influence 
of the Kinneys. The furniture looked Hke them, in fact." 

Suddenly old Mrs. Kinney's hawklike eyes discovered 
something unheard-of: "Well, I declare, if you hain't put 
the butter on in one o' my blue chainy saucers? Now you 
know I don't allow that saucer to be took down by nobody. 
I don't see what's got into yeh ! Anybody'd s'pose you 
never see any comp'ny b'fore — wouldn't they, pa ? " " Sh'd 
say th' would," said pa. " Seems as if we couldn't keep 
anything in this house sep'rit from the rest." Accidentally 
Agnes dropped a plate, the crash of which started Granny 
Kinney once more. ^'Good land o' Goshen ! " she screamed. 
" If you ain't the worst I ever see. I'll bet that's my grape- 
vine plate. If it is — Well, of all the mercies, it ain't. But 
it might 'a' ben. I never see your beat — never ! that's the 
third plate since I came to live here." In the midst of all 
this exasperating and characteristic criticism, there sounded 
unexpectedly the brutal voice of Agnes's husband, Ed, who 
had come home for his Sunday dinner after a horse trade at 
a neighbor's : "What the devul is all this row about? Agg, 
can't you get along without stirring up the old folks every 
time I'm out o' the house?" Ed, clad in greasy overalls 
and a hickory shirt, lounged in with insolent swagger, and 
greeted his old-time rival with easy familiarity. Then he 
led the way to dinner. " Well, let's go out and set up. 
Come, Dad, sling away that Bible and come to grub. 
Mother, what the devul are you snififlin' at? Say, now, 
look here ! if I hear any more about this row, I'll simply 
let you walk down to meetin'." 



1 86 Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley 

The dinner conversation was of the same humih'ating and 
fault-finding tone. When Ed discovered that it was only 
a white dish that his wife had broken, he cut short his 
mother's whining criticism of her daughter-in-law with a 
somewhat vigorous protest : " Well, now, I'll git into that 
dog-gasted cubberd some day an' break the whole eternal 
outfit. I ain't goin' to have this damned jawin' goin' on." 
After dinner, as Ed drove away with his old father and 
mother for the "meetin'," the latter screamed at her 
daughter-in-law : '' Don't you leave them dishes f'r me to 
wash. An' if we don't git home by five, them caaves orter 
be fed." 

Out of this heart-sickening round of drudgery and abuse, 
Will Hannan persuaded Agnes to go with him, — leaving a 
loveless husband and a dreary house, but taking with her 
her little child. Through the open door he pointed to the 
sunlight shining on a field of wheat : " That's where I'll take 
you, — out into the sunshine," the sunshine of renewed 
hope and appreciative love. And forgetful of the mistaken 
past, of social custom, and of public prejudice, they went 
forth together, into a wider world of new life. 

In the story called " Up the Coolly " has been drawn a 
pitiless picture of a risen man, who for ten years has been 
practically indifferent to the conditions surrounding his 
mother and brother out upon a Western farm ; and the suc- 
cessful man on his return to his old home is a good deal 
irritated and chagrined by the attitude of his brother, who 
in the meantime has been struggling in a grinding poverty 
and a hopeless condition of debt. The welcome given by 
the Western brother is grudging and surly — he has had to 
bear the long heat and heavy burden of the day, until he is 
past the best possibilities of his life, which has settled into a 



" Main-Traveled Roads " 1 87 

sullen despair. " The Return of the Private " presents that 
truly pathetic side of the Civil War — so often unconsidered 
amid the reverberations of successful battles — in which the 
poor and unknown soldier returns to wring a hard sub- 
sistence from the furrows he abandoned for his country's 
good ; while " Under the Lion's Paw " is the depressing 
story of a farm mortgage and the crushing injustice of com- 
pelHng a poor renter to pay for his own improvements. 

What the poor man, unknown and broken in health, re- 
turned to at the close of the Civil War, is grimly and 
pathetically portrayed in the " Return of a Private," whose 
opening picture is that of a group of veterans expectantly 
nearing their home county of La Crosse, in Wisconsin. On 
the train from New Orleans they had relieved the tedium of 
the long journey by jests and raillery and elaborate discus- 
sion of their future plans, now that peace was come ; and at 
their entrance on Wisconsin territory, and again at Madison, 
their enthusiasm took the form of a cheer. But as they 
neared La Crosse, the four or five remaining soldiers grew 
thoughtful and silent. They were gaunt and brown, and one 
was pale with the effects of fever and ague still upon him. 
One carried a scar, another was lame, and all had the pre- 
ternatural brightness of eye that goes with emaciation. 

In suggestive contrast to their setting out, their home- 
coming was lacking in bands of music and the waving of 
ladies' handkerchiefs — the enthusiasm of a spectacle was 
gone; and not even the loafers at the depots where the 
freight train with its caboose stopped gave any heed to this 
grimy, dusty contingent in blue, now become so familiar. 
Being a freight train, it naturally was behind time, and it was 
two o'clock in the morning before the travel-worn soldiers 
heard the engine whistle '' down brakes " for La Crosse. 



1 88 Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley 

Here they were, in the dead of night, on the station plat- 
form — poor farmers whose homes were several miles out in 
the districts adjoining the town. The man who showed 
signs of fever and ague. Private Smith, remarked economi- 
cally : " We've got to stay somewhere till mornin'. Now, I 
ain't got no two dollars to waste on a hotel. I've got a wife 
and children, so I'm goin' to roost on a bench and take the 
cost of a bed out of my hide." '^ Same here," said another 
of the group. " Hide '11 grow on again, dollars come hard. 
It's goin' to be mighty hot skirmishin' to find a dollar these 
days." A third sarcastically inquired, " Don't think they'll 
be a deputation of citizens waitin' to 'scort us to a hotel, 
eh?" One of the younger men was so desperately ex- 
travagant as to think it necessary to go to a hotel. " I'm 
goin* to a hotel, ef I don't never lay up a cent." On 
Private Smith's observation that that would hardly do for one 
who had a wife and three " young uns " dependent on him, 
the younger man cheerfully exclaimed, " Which I ain't, 
thank the Lord ! and don't intend havin' while the court 
knows itself." 

The chilly and deserted waiting-room at the station, 
lighted by flaring oil lamps, made a forlorn and uncomfort- 
able resting-place for the old soldiers ; but in the midst of 
their hard economy a characteristic thoughtfulness shone 
out. By robbing themselves, the other soldiers somewhat 
softened with their blankets the bench on which Private 
Smith, the sick man, attempted to sleep. The two men, 
sitting with bowed heads in the chilly night air, grew stiff 
with cold and weariness, and now and then rose and walked 
about to relieve their uncomfortable situation. Private 
Smith, lying stretched on his hard and narrow bench, found 
it difficult to sleep, and his mind went wandering out to his 



" Main-Traveled Roads " 189 

half-cleared farm, with its insatiable mortgage ready to swal- 
low half his earnings. And here he was, — after three years 
of his life had been given to his country on a mere pittance 
of pay, — broken in body and despondent in heart, com- 
pelled to look the grim situation in the face. Toward dawn 
he fell asleep, his head resting on his knapsack, his thin face 
turned toward the ceiHng, his hands clasped over his breast ; 
and the unconscious figure was touched with an indefinable 
effect of mute and pathetic weakness. 

In strange contrast to the ughness of the station and the 
unkempt appearance of the weary-looking men was the 
beauty and the sweetness of the dawn. " Morning dawned 
at last, slowly, with a pale yellow dome of light rising silently 
above the bluffs, which stand like some huge storm-devas- 
tated castle, just east of the city. Out to the left the great 
river swept on its massive yet silent way to the south. Blue- 
jays called across the water from hillside to hillside through 
the clear, beautiful air, and hawks began to skim the tops 
of the hills." The older men had gone out, taking great 
care not to waken their sick comrade ; and when he was 
finally roused by the switching of an engine, he folded up 
his blankets and went out to find his companions. 

They stood silently gazing at the familiar river and the 
hills. " Looks natcher'l, don't it? " they said to him, as he 
came out. "That's what it does. An' it looks good. 
D'yeh see that peak? " He pointed to a beautiful, symmet- 
rical peak that seemed to overtop the rest. "It was 
touched by the morning sun and it glowed like a beacon, 
and a light scarf of gray morning fog was rolling up its 
shadowed side." Private Smith added that just beyond the 
peak lay his own farm, and that if he could only " ketch a 
ride " he would be home by dinner time. But one of his 



190 Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley 

companions suggested that it was breakfast, rather than 
dmner, time he was thmking of; whereupon Private Smith 
resignedly remarked, " I guess it's one more meal o' hard- 
tack fr me." At a restaurant they got some coffee to 
*'wash down" their army ration, and Smith, holding up a 
piece of hardtack by the corner, commented prophetically, 
"Time'll come, when this'll be a curiosity." 

" I hope to God it will ! I bet I've chawed hardtack 
enough to shingle every house in the coolly. ... I've took 
it dry, soaked, and mashed. I've had it wormy, musty, 
sour, and blue-moldy. I've had it in little bits and big 
bits ; 'fore coffee an' after coffee. I'm ready f r a change. 
I'd Hke t' git holt jest about now o' some of the hot biscuits 
my wife c'n make when she lays herself out fr company." 
It was remarked somewhat sarcastically that if the speaker 
" set there gabbhn' " any longer, he would never see his 
wife. With characteristic American humor under ditftculties. 
Private Smith invited them to drink, — but it wasn't whisky. 
" Wait a moment, boys ; less take suthin'. It's on me." 
He led the way to a rusty tin dipper hanging by the side of 
a wooden water-pail, and with a humorous grin they all 
drank. Then shouldering their blankets and muskets they 
started out on their last march, — the march to the home 
farms. 

Along the turnpike and up the winding river road they 
kept together. "The river was very lovely, curving down 
along its sandy beds, pausing now and then under broad 
basswood trees, or running in dark, swift, silent currents 
under tangles of wild grapevines, and drooping alders, and 
haw trees." At one of these beautiful spots along the river 
bank the three veterans sat down to rest, largely " on Smith's 
account." " I tell yeh, boys, this knocks the swamps of 



" Main-Traveled Roads '* 191 

Loueesiana into kingdom come." And the reply came : 
" You bet. All they c'n raise down there is snakes, niggers, 
and p'rticler hell." "An' fightin' men," suggested the older 
man. " An' fightin' men. If I had a good hook an' line I'd 
sneak a pick'rel out o' that pond. Say, remember that time 
I shot that alhgator — ." "I guess we'd better be crawlin' 
along," interrupted Smith, rising and shouldering his knap- 
sack with an effort that he tried to conceal. With a prac- 
tical sympathy born of long comradeship, one of his 
companions suggested, "Say, Smith, lemme give you a 
lift on that." " I guess I c'n manage," said Smith, un- 
willing to seem a burden. " Course. But, yo' see, I may 
not have a chance right off to pay yeh back for the times 
you've carried my gun and hull caboodle. Say, now, gimme 
that gun, anyway." And Smith, rather reluctantly, yielded 
it up to his insistent companion. 

As they plodded doggedly along through the mcreasing 
heat of the sun, it seemed strange to Smith that no teams 
were passing; and when a comrade recalled that it was 
Sunday morning. Smith exultingly thought of how he would 
be home in time for Sunday dinner. " Well," said old Jim 
Cranby, with a relish in his voice, "Well, I'll git home jest 
about six o'clock, jest about when the boys are milkin' the 
cows. I'll step into the barn an' then I'll say : ' Hea/i ! 
why ain't this milkin' done before this time o' day?' An' 
then won't they yell ! " 

And then Private Smith pictured his home-coming. '* I'll 
jest go up the path. Old Rover'll come down the road to 
meet me. He won't bark ; he'll know me, an' he'll come 
down waggin' his tail an' showin' his teeth. That's his way 
of laughin'. An' so I'll walk up to the kitchen door, an' 
I'll say, ' Dinner f 'r a hungry man ! ' An' then she'll jump 



192 Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley 

up, an' — ." But his voice choked. And Saunders, the 
third man, hardly spoke as he walked silently behind the 
others ; for the first year of his service he had lost his wife, 
who died of pneumonia due to exposure in the autumn 
rains, when she worked in the fields in place of her husband. 

At last they came to the parting of the ways, and as they 
grounded their muskets Smith remarked : " Well, boys, 
here's where we shake hands. We've marched together a 
good many miles, an' now I s'pose we're done. I hope 
I'll see yeh once in a while, boys, to talk over old times." 
" Of course," said Saunders, with a quaver in his voice, " it 
ain't exactly like dyin'." And they all found it hard to look 
at one another. Cranby and Saunders expressed their anxi- 
ety about Smith's further journey alone, and offered to go 
with him ; but he characteristically made light of it, rather 
cheerfully exclaiming : " Oh, I'm all right ! Don't worry 
about me. Every step takes me nearer home, yeh see. 
Well, good-by, boys." They shook hands, with " good- 
by " and " good luck " ; and just before his two comrades 
passed out of sight he waved his cap to them, and they to 
him, and all shouted. 

On his lonely and toilsome journey his mind was filled 
with sad memories of his dead " chum," Billy Tripp, whom 
a wailing " minie " ball had struck through the heart. He 
fell face forward in the dirt of the plowed field they were 
marching across ; and now Private Smith must break the 
news to Billy's mother and sweetheart. Yet anticipations 
of home gradually conquered the shadows of retrospect ; 
the fields and houses grew familiar ; now and then he was 
greeted by people who recognized him from their doorways, 
and once he accepted a drink of milk at a neighbor's well- 
side. He labored on through the burning sun, up the slope. 



" Main-Traveled Roads '* 193 

occasionally stopping to rest. " He crawled along like some 
minute, wingless variety of fly." When he reached the 
summit of the ridge he tried some of the same old hard- 
tack, this time relieved by the juice of wild berries ; and as 
he sat there resting he could at last look down into his own 
home coolly. 

Here was the typical figure of the war-worn man, who 
represented in his experience how many thousands, return- 
ing from blood and suffering only to be plunged into the 
almost harder fate of a strenuous battle against poverty and 
loss. To use Mr. Garland's words in describing this lonely 
figure : ''His wide, round gray eyes gazed down into the 
beautiful valley, seeing and not seeing the splendid cloud- 
shadows sweeping over the western hills and across the 
green and yellow wheat far below. His head drooped for- 
ward on his palm, his shoulders took on a tired stoop, his 
cheek-bones showed painfully. An observer might have 
said, ' He is looking down on his own grave.' " 

At the Smith farm on that Sunday morning Mrs. Smith 
was alone with her three children. Her farm, rented to a 
neighbor, lay at the head of a coolly, or narrow gully, on 
either side of which rose the great hills left standing by the 
plowshare of the floods. Wakened from dreams of her 
absent husband by the noises of the chickens, she went out 
into the yard, the fowls clustering about her as she went ; 
" a cow called in a deep, musical bass, and a calf answered 
from a little pen near by, and a pig scurried guiltily out of 
the cabbages." Seeing the effects of neglect all about her, — 
the straying pig, the tangled grass in the garden, the broken 
fence which she had mended again and again, — the little 
woman sat down and cried. 

It was only a few years before that they had bought the 
o 



194 Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley 

farm, paying for it in part and mortgaging the rest ; and her 
husband had worked " nights and Sundays " to clear the 
farm of its brush and its insatiable mortgage. Suddenly 
came the call of the country for help, and Edward Smith 
" threw down his scythe and grub ax, turned his cattle 
loose, and became a blue-coated cog in a vast machine for 
killing men and not thistles." And the little wife left be- 
hind had had her special burden and sorrow through the 
three years of her husband's service. Two brothers had 
been killed ; the renter in whose hands her husband had left 
the farm had proved a villain ; one year the farm had had 
no crops, and now the overripe grain was waiting till the 
new renter had cared for his own crop. 

Six weeks before a letter had come, telHng of her hus- 
band's discharge in the near future ; the papers had brought 
news that the army was disbanding ; and from day to day 
blue-coated survivors were returning to the county, — but 
her hero was not among them. Each week she had told the 
children he was coming, and she had watched the road so 
long for his approach that now her eyes unconsciously wan- 
dered down the coolly road from wherever she stood. This 
morning Mrs. Smith's disappointment and loneliness became 
intolerable; so that, as some measure of relief, she dressed 
the little folks in their best calico dresses and home-made 
jackets, and set off down the coolly for the home of her 
neighbor, " Widder " Gray, who was the '' visible incarnation 
of hospitaUty and optimistic poverty." 

The open-hearted, smiling widow came down the path to 
meet Mrs. Smith and her children, exclaiming as she came, 
" Oh, you little dears ! come right to your granny. Gimme 
a kiss ! Come right in, Mis' Smith. How are yeh, anyway? 
Nice mornin', ain't it? Come in an' set down. Everything's 



" Main-Traveled Roads " 195 

in a clutter, but that won't scare you any." And she led the 
way into the " best room," — a sunny, square one, — its floor 
covered with a faded and patched rag carpet and its walls 
with a white-and-green-striped paper ; while here and there 
" faded effigies of dead members of the family hung in vari- 
ously sized oval walnut frames." 

It was a noisy, breezy, hospitable home that Mrs. Smith 
and her children had come to visit, and its enlivening influ- 
ence was irresistible. There was laughter and singing, and 
Mrs. Smith, in the midst of it, forgot her anxiety and laughed 
and smiled herself. Toward noon the widow's eldest son 
arrived, with aU his family, from Sand Lake Coolly, and the 
widow began giving orders. " Well, go put out your team, 
an' go'n bring me in some taters; an', Sim, you go see if 
you c'n find some corn. Sadie, you put on the water to bile. 
Come, now, hustle yer boots, all o' yeh. If I feed this yer 
crowd, we've got to have some raw materials. If y' think 
I'm goin' to feed yeh on pie, you're jest mightily mistaken." 

The children went off into the fields, the girls made some 
of the preparations for dinner in the kitchen, and then re- 
tired to change their dresses and " fix up," innocently re- 
marking as they went that '^ somebody might come." In 
pretended dismay the breezy and knowing mother exclaimed : 
" Land sakes, I hope not ! I don't know where in time I'd 
set 'em, 'less they'd eat at the second table." Out on the 
grass before the house the widow's two older boys, who had 
served their time in the army, were whittHng and talking 
about the war, the crops, and the buying of a threshing 
machine ; while the older girls and Mrs. Smith helped in 
enlarging the dinner table, putting on the dishes, and swell- 
ing the sum total of good-natured but rather incoherent 
conversation. 



196 Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley 

Finally, the widow had them all for audience in her dis- 
sertation on girls in love, and their uselessness. " Girls in 
love ain't no use in the whole blessed week," she said. 
" Sundays they're a-lookin' down the road, expectin' he'll 
come. Sunday afternoons they can't think o' nothin' else 
'cause he's here. Monday mornin's they're sleepy and kind 
o' dreamy and slimpsy, and good f'r nothin' on Tuesday 
and Wednesday. Thursday they git absent-minded, an' 
begin to look off toward Sunday agin, an' mope aroun' an' 
let the dish water git cold, right under their noses. Friday 
they break dishes, an' go off in the best room an' snivel 
an' look out o' the winder. Saturdays they have queer 
spurts o' workin' like all p'ssessed, an' spurts o' frizzin' their 
hair. An' Sunday they begin it all over agin." Whereat 
the girls giggled and blushed, and Mrs. Smith remarked 
that she ought not to stay to dinner in view of prospective 
guests. " Now you set right down ! " said Mrs. Gray, in- 
sistently. " If any of them girls' beaus comes, they'll have 
to take what's left, that's all. They ain't s'posed to have 
much appetite, nohow. No, you're goin' to stay if they 
starve, an' they ain't no danger o' that." 

At one o'clock one of the girls took down a conch-shell 
from a nail and blew a long, free blast that brought the 
children from " the forest of corn," from the creek, the 
barn-loft, and the garden. " They come to their feed f'r 
all the world jest like the pigs when y' holler ' poo-ee ! ' 
See 'em scoot ! " said Mrs. Gray, aglow with the sight. 
The men " soused " their faces in the cold, hard water of 
the horse-trough ; and in a few moments the groaning 
table, piled with boiled potatoes, boiled corn on the cob, 
squash and pumpkin pies, and hot biscuit and honey, was 
surrounded with a merry crowd of ardent eaters, a row of 



" Main-Traveled Roads " 197 

hungry-eyed youngsters in the kitchen looking on and wait- 
ing their impatient turn. 

The widow informed the strenuous circle of diners that 
she couldn't afford to give the "young uns " tea, as she was 
reserving it for the "women-folks, and 'specially fr Mis' 
Smith an' Bill's wife. We're a-goin' to tell fortunes by it." 
One by one the men became satisfied and withdrew, and 
one by one the eager-eyed children took their places, and 
by two o'clock the women were left to themselves around 
the " debris-covered " table, and free to sip their tea and 
settle their fortunes. As they got well down to the grounds 
in the cup, they shook them with a circular motion in the 
hand, and then turned them bottom-side up quickly in the 
saucer ; then twirled them three or four times one way, and 
three or four times the other, during a breathless pause. 
Then Mrs. Gray lifted the cup, and gazing into it with pro- 
found gravity, pronounced the impending fate. 

At last came Mrs. Smith's turn, and she trembled with 
excitement as Mrs. Gray composed her naturally jovial face 
into an appropriate solemnity of expression. " Somebody's 
comin' to yoii,^^ said the prophetess, after a long pause. 
"He's got a musket on his back. He's a soldier. He's 
almost here. See?" She pointed to two little tea stems 
that formed a faint resemblance to a man with a musket on 
his back, and he had climbed nearly to the edge of the cup. 
Mrs. Smith was pale with suppressed excitement, and the 
cup shook in her hand as she gazed into it. Suddenly Mrs. 
Gray cried out : " It's Ed. He's on the way home. Heavens 
an' earth ! There he is now ! " She waved her hand in 
the direction of the road, and there, in very truth, was a 
man in blue with a musket on his back, toiling slowly up 
the hill, his bent head half hidden by his knapsack. So 



198 Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley 

toilsome was his step that walking seemed indeed " a pro- 
cess of falling " ; yet so eager was he to get home that he 
would not stop, nor look aside, but " plodded on amid the 
cries of the locusts, the welcome of the crickets, and the 
rustle of the yellow wheat. Getting back to God's country, 
and his wife and babies ! " 

The little wife, laughing, crying, and calling to him and 
the children at the same time, snatched her h:it and ran out 
into the yard ; but by the time the children had been found 
the soldier had disappeared over the hilltop, beyond the 
reach of her voice. Yet there was the doubt that it might 
not be her husband, after all, for the man refused to turn 
his head at their shouts ; and if it had been Edward Smith 
he would hardly have passed his old neighbor's without stop- 
ping to rest. Wavering between hope and doubt, the litde 
woman hurried up the coolly as fast as she could push the 
baby-wagon, the blue-coated figure moving steadily on 
ahead. 

When the panting Htde group came in sight of the gate, 
they saw the figure in army blue leaning upon the rail fence, 
his chin resting on his palms and his eyes gazing at the 
empty house, while at his feet in the grass lay his knapsack, 
canteen, and blankets. He stood lost in a dream, and his 
hungry eyes seemed fairly to devour the scene, — the rough 
lawn, the little unpainted house, the field of yellow wheat 
behind it, and over it all the level light of the westering sun. 
Here was a haunt of old-time peace that the eyes of his 
imagination had often seen in the last three struggling years. 
" O God ! how far removed from all camps, hospitals, battle 
lines ! A little cabin in a Wisconsin coolly, but it was majes- 
tic in its peace." 

Trembling and weak with emotion, her eyes fixed on the 



" Main-Traveled Roads " 199 

silent figure, Mrs. Smith hurried noiselessly through the dust 
and grass, her oldest boy a little in advance. " Who are 
you, sir? " the httle woman started to ask; but suddenly the 
pale face of the private turned full upon her and the cry of 
" Emma ! " broke from his lips. " Edward ! " was all she 
could answer, as she sobbingly kissed this strange and bearded 
man, the daughter Mary sobbing in sympathy with her 
mother. Illness had left the soldier partly deaf, and this 
increased the strangeness of his manner. Even -after the 
girl had kissed her father, the youngest child refused to 
come to him, and backing away under the fence stood peer- 
ing at him critically. The father called " my little man " in 
vain. Alas ! between him and his baby war had come, and 
left him only a strange man with big eyes, a soldier with 
mother hanging to his arm and talking to him in an excited 
voice. ''And this is Tom," said the father, drawing the 
older boy to him. " He 7/ come and see me ! Ife knows 
his poor old pap when he comes home from the war ! " 

Recognizing the pain and remonstrance in her husband's 
voice, the mother hastened to explain : " You've changed 
so, Ed. He can't know yeh. This is papa, Teddy ; come 
and kiss him — Tom and Mary do. Come, won't you?" 
But Teddy still peered through the fence with investigating 
eyes, well out of reach. " He resembled a half-wild kitten 
that hesitates, studying the tones of one's voice." "I'll fix 
him," said the soldier, suddenly recalling some of his re- 
sources in the knapsack. Sitting down, he undid his knap- 
sack and drew out three great red apples. Giving one to 
each of the older children, he cried : " Now I guess he'll 
come. Eh, my httle man? Now come see your pap!" 
Teddy crept slowly under the fence, assisted by his zealous 
older brother, and soon was kicking in his father's arms. 



200 Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley 

Then together they entered the house, going into the " sit- 
ting room," poor and bare, with its rag carpet, its two or 
three chromos, and its pictures from Harper's Weekly pinned 
about upon the walls. 

Once in his own home again, the exhausted soldier flung 
himself down upon the carpet as he used to do, while his 
wife brought a pillow to put under his head, and the children 
stood about munching their apples. And then the soldier 
talked, question after question pouring forth with regard to 
crops and cattle, the renter and the neighbors. He sHpped 
off the great government brogans from his tired and blistered 
feet, and stretched himself in utter and blessed relaxation, 
feeling no longer the stress of a soldier under command. 
At supper he stopped and listened and smiled — it was old 
Spot, the cow, that he heard. And then came the inquiry 
for the old dog Rover. Learning that he had died the winter 
before, probably by poison, the soldier, after a pause of sad- 
dened memory, spoke with trembling feeling in his voice : 
" Poor old feller ! He'd 'a' known me half a mile away. I 
expected him to come down the hill to meet me. It 'ud 'a' 
been more like comin' home if I could 'a' seen him comin' 
down the road, an' waggin' his tail, an' laughin' that way he 
has. I tell yeh, it kind o' took hold o' me to see the blinds 
down an' the house shut up." 

Such was the pathos of his home-coming ; but now even 
the sound of the chickens out in the yard was sweet to him, 
and of the turkeys and the crickets. " Do you know they 
don't have just the same kind o' crickets down South?" 
And then he thought of the grain ready to cut, and of his 
own inability to do anything, on account of the fever and 
ague that now had him in its grip. " I don't know when 
111 get rid of it. I'll bet I've took twenty-five pounds of 



" Main-Traveled Roads " 201 

quinine if I've taken a bit. Gimme another biscuit. I 
tell yeh, they taste good, Emma. I hain't had anything 
like it — Say, if you'd 'a' hear'd me braggin' to th' boys 
about your butter 'n' biscuits, I'll bet your ears 'ud 'a' 
burnt," The gratification of the private's wife was seen in 
her deepening color, as she modestly said : " Oh, you're 
always a-braggin' about your things. Everybody makes 
good butter." " Yes ; old lady Snyder, for instance." " Oh, 
well, she ain't to be mentioned. She's Dutch." " Or old 
Mis' Snively. One more cup o' tea, Mary. That's my girl ! 
I'm feeling better already. I just b'lieve the matter with me 
is, I'm starved^ 

That was one of the sweet hours in the lives of the 
private and his wife — they were lovers again ; but their 
tenderness was in tones rather than in words. His praise 
of her biscuit, she knew, was praise of herself. He showed 
her how near the bullets had brought him to death, and she 
shuddered to think how near she came to being a soldier's 
widow. Finally, they rose and went out together into the 
garden, and down to the barn, and he stood beside her as 
she milked old Spot. And there they planned for fields 
and crops another year. His farm was weedy, a renter had 
run off with his machinery, his children needed clothing, he 
was sick and thin and weak ; but the heroic soul that fought 
on Southern battlefields, because it thought that there lay the 
safety of the nation, took up its daily fight against nature 
and debt and injustice with the same unflinching resolution. 

" Oh, that mystic hour ! the pale man with big eyes 
standing there by the well, with his young wife by his side. 
The vast moon swinging above the eastern peaks, the cattle 
winding down the pasture slopes with jangling bells, the 
crickets singing, the stars blooming out sweet and far and 



202 Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley 

serene ; the katydids rhythmically calling, the little turkeys 
crying querulously as they settled to roost in the poplar 
tree near the open gate. The voices at the well drop lower, 
the little ones nestle in their father's arms at last, and Teddy 
falls asleep there." Surely, here is a real picture, — this 
first night of the private's return ; and here are real pro- 
vincial types, — the poor young farmer, filled with sturdy 
patriotism, and returning to a life burdened with disease 
and debt ; the quick-hearted, driving, breezy, and motherly 
Widow Gray ; and the long-suffering, brave, and patiently 
waiting little farmer's wife, whose heroism was in some 
regards more difficult than that of her sick and war-worn 
husband. 

One of the most characteristic and pathetic sketches in 
the book is that of " Mrs. Ripley's Trip," in which is set 
forth with delicate and intimate sympathy the resolute en- 
deavor of old Mrs. Ripley to pay a visit " back to her folks 
in York State." She and her husband, Uncle Ethan Ripley, 
were sitting, one windy November night, in their poor Httle 
shanty, " set like a chicken-trap on the vast Iowa prairie." 
She was knitting a stocking for her little grandson, after 
having " finished the supper dishes," and Uncle Ethan was 
mending his old violin. The only light was a tallow candle, 
— they could afford "none o' them new-fangled lamps." 
The room was small, the chairs hard, the walls bare, — pov- 
erty was plainly an ever-present guest. Mrs. Ripley, look- 
ing pathetically small and hopeless in her faded, ill-fitting 
garments, knitted tirelessly with her knotted, stiffened fin- 
gers, but in her little black eyes sparkled a peculiar light, 
and "in the straight line of her withered and shapeless Hps " 
there was written an unusual resoluteness. 

Suddenly she stopped, and, looking at her husband, said 



" Main-Traveled Roads " 203 

decisively : " Ethan Ripley, you'll haff to do your own cook- 
ing from now on to New Year's. I'm goin' back to Yaark 
State." Uncle Ethan was naturally amazed, and the ques- 
tion of the cost at once leaped to the first place in the old 
man's mind. The financial consideration seemed to him to 
put the whole idea out of the question. Her intimation 
that she would get the money herself, and that if she waited 
for him to pay her way the visit would never take place, 
aroused the old man to self-defense, in which he insisted he 
had done his part. " I don't know what y' call doin' my 
part, Ethan Ripley ; but if cookin' for a drove of harvest 
hands and thrashin' hands, takin' care o' the eggs and 
butter, 'n' diggin' taters an' milkin' ain't my part, I don't 
never expect to do my part, 'n' you might as well know it 
fust's last." 

She declared she was now sixty years old, and had never 
had a day to herself, " not even Fourth o' July." *' I ain't 
been away t' stay over night for thirteen years in this house, 
'n' it was just so in Davis County for ten more. For twenty- 
three years, Ethan Ripley, I've stuck right to the stove an' 
churn without a day or a night off." And during every one 
of those years she had "just about promised " herself to go 
back and see her " folks." 

After Tukey, the little grandson, had been sent upstairs 
to bed, the old man, with a sense of having been put in an 
ungenerous attitude toward his wife's going, said apologeti- 
cally : " Wal, I'm just as willin' you should go as I am for 
myself, but if I ain't got no money I don't see how I'm 
goin' to send — " But his wife broke in upon him :* " I 
don't want ye to send; nobody ast ye to, Ethan Ripley. 
I guess if I had what I've earnt since we came on this farm, 
I'd have enough to go to Jericho with." He insisted, how- 



204 Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley 

ever, though gently, that she had got as much out of it as 
he had. " Ain't I been wantin' to go back myself ? And 
ain't I kep' still 'cause I see it wa'n't no use? I guess I've 
worked jest as long and as hard as you, an' in storms an' in 
mud an' heat, ef it comes t' that." To which his wife, 
though recognizing the justice of his remarks, replied rather 
pungently, "Wal, if you'd 'a' managed as well as I have, 
you'd have some money to go with." 

The next day, in the midst of cold blustering weather, 
the old man was husking alone in the field, his gaunt figure 
covered with two or three ragged coats, his hands partly 
protected with gloves that lacked most of the fingers, his 
thumbs done up in " stalls," and his feet thrust into great 
coarse boots. His hands were wet with handling the ears 
of corn, and chapped and sore. Meditating on the subject 
of his wife's visit, he came to the generous conclusion that 
she really needed a " play-spell." " I ain't likely to be no 
richer next year than I am this one ; if I wait till I'm able 
to send her she won't never go. I calc'late I c'n git enough 
out o' them shoats to send her. I'd kind a' lotted on eat'n' 
them pigs done up in sassengers, but if the ol' woman goes 
East, Tukey an' me'll kind a' haff to pull through without 
'em. . . . Then there is my buffalo overcoat. I'd kind a' 
calc'lated on havin' a buffalo — but that's gone up the 
spout along with them sassengers." 

Coming in that evening with a big armful of wood, which 
he let fall with a crash into the wood-box, he slapped his 
mittens together to knock off the ice and snow, and said : 
" I was tellin' Tukey t'-day that it was a dum shame our 
crops hadn't turned out better. An' when I saw ol' Hat- 
field go by I hailed him, an' asked him what he'd gimme 
for two o' m' shoats. Wal, the upshot is, I sent t' town for 



" Main-Traveled Roads '* 205 

some things I calc'late you'd need. An' here's a ticket to 
Georgetown, and ten dollars." Whereupon Mrs. Ripley, 
touched by the unexpected tenderness and sacrifice of her 
husband, broke down and sobbed. " She felt like kissing 
him, but she didn't." 

The unaccustomed tears of his wife made the old man 
walk over and timidly touch her hair, explaining as he did 
so that he was going to sell the pigs anyway. Suddenly 
Mrs. Ripley sprang up, ran into the bedroom, and quickly 
returned with a yarn mitten, tied round the wrist, which she 
laid on the table with emphasis. " I don't want yer money. 
There's money enough to take me where I want to go." 
She emptied the contents of the mitten, and' there on the 
table lay the savings of many years, mostly in silver dimes 
and quarters. " They's jest seventy-five dollars and thirty 
cents," she said proudly; "jest about enough to go back 
on. Ticket is fifty-five dollars, goin' and comin'. That 
leaves twenty dollars for other expenses, not countin' what 
I've already spent, which is six-fifty. It's plenty." She de- 
clared against such unnecessary expenses on the trip as 
sleepers and hotel bills. " I ain't agoin' to pay them pirates 
as much for a day's board as we'd charge for a week's, and 
have nawthin' to eat but dishes. I'm goin' to take a chicken 
an' some hard-boiled eggs, an' I'm goin' right through to 
Georgetown." 

Her husband finally persuaded her to accept the ticket 
he had bought for her, — when she learned that the railroad 
company would refuse to take it back ; and the next day 
they drove together to the little town where she was to take 
the train. The day was cold and raw, there was some snow 
on the ground, and the old people sat on a board laid 
across the wagon box, an old quilt or two drawn up over 



2o6 Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley 

their laps. Mrs. Ripley wore a shawl over her head, and 
carried her queer little bonnet in her hand. Her last 
words to old Uncle Ethan were : " You'll find a jar o' sweet 
pickles an' some crab-apple sauce down suller, 'n' you'd 
better melt up brown sugar for 'lasses, 'n' for goodness' 
sake don't eat all them mince-pies up the fust week, 'n' 
see that Tukey ain't froze goin' to school. An' now you'd 
better get out for home. Good-by ! an' remember them 
pies." 

One cold winter's day a queer little figure was seen strug- 
gling along the country road, blocked here and there with 
drifts. It was Mrs. Ripley getting back from "Yaark 
State." She was laden with bundles, and every now and 
then the wind would twist her full-skirted black dress about 
her and sail her off into the deep snow outside the track. 
But she held bravely on till she reached a neighbor's gate. 
To an insistent invitation to stay, she energetically repHed : 
" I must be gittin' back to Ripley. I expec' that man has 
jes let ev'ry thing go six ways f r Sunday. ... I s'pose 
they have had a gay time of it " (she meant the opposite 
of gay). "Wal, as I told Lizy Jane, I've had my spree, an' 
now I've got to git back to work. There ain't no rest for 
such as we are. . . . I've saw a pile o' this world, Mrs. 
Stacey — a pile of it ! I didn't think they was so many big 
houses in the world as I saw b'tween here an' Chicago. . . . 
Good-by ! I must be gittin' home to Ripley. He'll want 
his supper on time." 

Uncle Ripley was at the barn when she arrived, and when 
he came in she had her " regimentals " on, the stove was 
brushed, the room swept, and she was deep in the dish-pan. 
" Hullo, mother ! got back, hev yeh? " " I sh'd say it was 
about //;;/^," she answered curtly, without stopping her work. 



*'* Main-Traveled Roads " 207 

"Has ol' * Grumpy' dried up yit?" And Mrs. Ripley's 
long-considered trip was done. 

Such laborious, patient, saving, and unselfish types as 
Uncle Ethan Ripley and his resolute little wife lend a pathos 
and heroic quahty to the history of farm Ufa in the great 
Northwest. 



PROVINCIAL TYPES IN THE FAR 
WEST 

CHAPTER XV 

A BRIEF SURVEY OF THE FIELD 

In such stories as the " Led-Horse Claim," " Coeur 
d'Alene," and "John Bodewin's Testimony," Mary Hallock 
Foote has presented various phases of Western mining 
hfe with sympathetic feeling and literary art ; and in short 
stories Hke "The King of the Broncos," "The Bite of 
the Pichucuate," and " Bonifacio's Horse-Thief," Charles F. 
Lummis gives us vivid sketches of characteristic life on the 
plains of New Mexico and Arizona, — a remote region that 
he has made peculiarly his own by patient sympathy, long 
residence, and intimate study both of its past and its pres- 
ent. Together with Mr. Lummis, Frederic Remington, by 
his " Sundown Leflare," his " Crooked Trails," and his " Men 
with the Bark On," — and most of all by his remarkably life- 
like and vigorous illustrations, — has saved for us the rapidly 
changing types in the Southwestern states and territories. 
Such literary work as these two men have done deserves 
wide and long recognition for its uniqueness and virility, 
and for the fact that what it has sought to portray is almost 
aboriginal and rapidly passing away. 

Although nothing else in the flood of very recent fiction 
208 



A Brief Survey of the Field 209 

is included in the scope of the present volume, it was found 
impossible to pass by " The Virginian " by Owen Wister, 
because, in looking for a broad and convincing character- 
ization of the " cow-puncher " of the Western plains, the 
mind irresistibly reverts to Miss Molly Wood's cowboy that 
rode and shot and won on the high plains of Wyoming. By 
his stories in " Red Men and White " and his more sus- 
tained effort in " Lin McLean," Mr. Wister, a Philadelphian 
and Harvard man, had served a long and careful appren- 
ticeship in literary art as a preparation for this really great 
book on Western life and character. And his years of close 
familiarity with the wide, wild country that reaches from the 
plains of Wyoming to the " painted desert " of Arizona and 
the ranches of Texas have given him a peculiar right and 
privilege to portray it permanently in literature. 

From one point of view " The Virginian," as Mr. Wister 
himself suggests in the preface, may be looked upon as an 
"historical novel," for "Wyoming, between 1874 and 1890 
[the period covered by the novel], was a colony as wild 
as was Virginia one hundred years earlier. As wild, with a 
scantier population, and the same primitive joys and dan- 
gers." But, like the buffalo and antelope and roving multi- 
tudes of cattle, the horseman will never come again, — at 
least on the plains of Wyoming. " He rides in his historic 
yesterday." 

And so, as the portrayal of a unique and vanishing type of 
American provincial life, " The Virginian " is doubly worth 
studying, — from the historical and from the literary point of 
view. Surely the literary art that has gone into the book is 
something fine and refreshing, — one gets that sense of free- 
dom and largeness, of nobility and wholesomeness, of being 
close to mother earth and also to the star-sown sky of true 



2IO Provincial Types in the Far West 

romance, which, after all, is the highest effect of great 
art. 

The gambling Virginian, his hand holding the unaimed 
pistol on the card table and his soft, drawling voice saying 
significantly to Trampas, " When you call me that, stnile " ; 
the humorous Virginian, sharing his bed with the patronizing 
drummer ; the sympathetic Virginian, tenderly helping Httle 
" Em'ly," the spinster hen, in her ludicrous attempts at 
motherhood, after puppies and potatoes had failed ; the 
strong and chivalric Virginian, lifting the pale little school- 
teacher out of the half-submerged stage and carrying her off 
through the flood ; and the same somewhat jealous Virgin- 
ian, joining with Lin McLean in exchanging babies, — the 
versatility and humor of this portraiture are indeed original 
and engaging. 

The Virginian as an indomitable lover, with his " You're 
goin' to love me before we get through" ; his sublimely 
humorous frog story, with its significant close, — *' Frawgs 
are dead, Trampas, and so are you " ; his spiritual, long- 
continued vigils with the orthodox and full-fed preacher. 
Dr. MacBride ; the wounded, almost dying man, with his 
head restmg against Molly Wood as she washed away the 
blood, near the spring ; his pitiful attempts to ride the five 
miles to safety and her heroic efforts to help him on the 
way; her brave and admirable nursing; his characteristic 
comment on the close of Browning's poem that she read to 
him ; his pathetic confession to her that he was not fitted to 
make her happy, — "This is no country for a lady" ; and the 
two, with the brilliant folds of the Navajo blanket about them, 
and Grandmother Stark's picture looking down upon them in 
a faint sort of approval, — such phases of the story have in 
them a human and dramatic touch that marks real Uterature. 



A Brief Survey of the Field 211 

But nowhere in the book does the weirdly dramatic reach 
such an intensity as in the night preceding the hanging of 
the horse-thieves to the cottonwoods ; and nowhere does 
the almost hopelessly tragic reach such a precipice of 
breathless interest as when, at sunset, the Virginian overrules 
the appealing terror of his sweetheart, and walks cautiously 
out to shoot and be shot at. The dead Trampas, with all his 
malevolence and murderous cunning while alive, clears the 
horizon for that wonderful honeymoon on the island and up 
among the mountain pines, and for that rather humorous 
visit back in Bennington among the conventional relatives. 

At times it seems as if Molly Wood were hardly worth 
the Virginian's while, but in the final test she is seen to be 
the true descendant of old Grandmother Stark, — a woman 
of heart and soul, of nerve and will, that came into a full 
appreciation of the Virginian's unusual and genuinely noble 
and lovable qualities, which proved to be in such combina- 
tion as to win and hold her love. 

In Hamlin Garland, also, the Far West has found a fortu- 
nate interpreter; and in the " Eagle's Heart," '' Her Moun- 
tain Lover," and most of all in the " Captain of the Gray 
Horse Troop," there is felt a full familiarity with its hfe, a 
strong power of characterization, and, in the last-mentioned 
volume, a remarkable sympathy with the Indian mind in its 
highest and truest outworkings. The same fine sympathy 
with the Indian character is seen in Helen Hunt Jackson's 
** Ramona," — that beautiful romance of Southern Cahfor- 
nia life, — even if the author has attempted to read into her 
Indian types many of the emotions and aspirations of her 
own poetic and philanthropic nature. 

In such unique short stories as the " Pearls of Loreto," 
the "Bells of San Gabriel," and "When the Devil was 



212 Provincial Types in the Far West 

Well," — found in the collection entitled " Before the Gringo 
Came," — Mrs. Gertrude Atherton has made striking studies 
in fiction of the earlier mixed Spanish and American life in 
Cahfornia ; and being herself a native of San Francisco, with 
a commingling of blood from Louisiana and New England, 
and having dehberately lived some of her later life in old 
towns and hamlets where some of the older Spanish customs 
and types survive, she seems peculiarly fitted by experience 
and natural endowment to picture with sympathy and an ap- 
proach to truthfulness the traits and types that differentiate 
dwellers on the Southern Pacific slope from Americans of 
other sections of the country. There is much of the spirit of 
romance in her work, as is illustrated in " The Cahfornians " ; 
but it grows easily out of the social conditions and the nat- 
ural environment which Mrs. Atherton so fully comprehends 
and feels. Mr. Ambrose Bierce has also touched phases of 
California character and scenery in his book of weird short 
stories called " Can Such Things Be ? " 

But for a certain side of earlier and more picturesque 
California Hfe, — the crude, primitive, daring life of the 
miner and the gambler, the fallen woman and the philan- 
thropic schoolmistress, and all the free, resolute types of a 
transplanted and heterogeneous civilization that characterize 
the frontier, the American, and especially the English, reader 
will instinctively turn to Bret Harte, whose best work was 
done while he was still a resident of California himself. For 
removal to the East, under the stress of great popularity, 
and later to England for the rest of his hfe, seems not to 
have given him much new literary material, but rather to 
have sent his imagination and affection back to the once 
virgin fields of the great Pacific slope, where lived (and still 
live, thanks to their creator) the improvised midwife 



A Brief Survey of the Field 213 

Stumpy, the heroic Kentuck that dying took " The Luck " 
with him, and the wilful but loyal M'liss ; the imperturbable, 
smooth-handed Oakhurst, " who struck a streak of bad 
luck " and " handed in his checks " on a certain December 
day of 1850 ; the tactful Higgles and her collapsing charge ; 
Yuba Bill, the reminiscent and facetious stage-driver ; and 
"Tennessee's Partner," who vainly argued for Tennessee 
with a full bag of gold. And where shall we find a more 
dramatic ride than that of Dick Bullen and the swift-footed 
Jovita, dashing through the night over Rattlesnake Hill in 
quest of Christmas toys for poor little Johnny, who had 
"a fevier, and childblains and roomatiz " ? Such a theme, 
with all its movement and human quality, might fidy have 
been celebrated by the author of " How They Brought the 
Good News from Ghent to Aix." The broken-armed Dick, 
arriving at Simpson's Bar at dawn and fainting on the thresh- 
old, with the remark that " Sandy Glaus has come," is a 
picture of pioneer sentiment and pathos that only Bret 
Harte knows how to paint with poetic touch. 

It was as far back as 1868, when Mr. Harte became, 
with Noah Brooks, the editor of the Overland Monthly in 
San Francisco, that " The Luck of Roaring Gamp " made 
its appearance in the second number of the magazine ; and 
the first issue of the monthly in 1869 contained another 
short story that suddenly showed the literary world a genius 
of a new order, — it was the thrilling short drama of " The 
Outcasts of Poker Flat." " M'Hss," " Miggles," "Tennes- 
see's Partner," and " How Santa Glaus Game to Simpson's 
Bar," with the two short stories just mentioned, make up a 
collection as unique and dramatic as anything in American 
literature. And with all that seems melodramatic in their 
make-up and with all their peculiar insistence on certain 



214 Provincial Types in the Far West 

traits that might not be celebrated in the most "respect- 
able " literature, these short stories have a vital quality, a 
subtlety of humorous sense, and a power of swift character- 
ization that make them a fresh delight to each new circle 
of readers. They have, too, a sensitive poetical feeling for 
the grandeur and beauty of the California mountains, for 
tl^e brilliant depths of the California sky, and the impress- 
iveness of the great woods that constitute a unique setting 
for the strange, picturesque types Mr. Harte has drawn with 
so Hght and yet so strong a hand. Some of these provincial 
characters are as truly rescued from oblivion by the art of 
Bret Harte as the Creole types have been by Mr. Cable, the 
Tennessee mountain types by Miss Murfree, or the Hoosier 
types by Edward Eggleston. Although in his longer-sustained 
effort of " Gabriel Conroy," Mr. Harte seems not to be at 
his best, in his other short stories, like " Found at Blazing 
Star" and "A Ship of '49," included in the collection 
entitled " Frontier Stories," and " The Rose of Tuolomne " 
and " An Heiress of Red Dog," included in " Tales of the 
Argonauts," one feels the same sense of easy power in 
dialogue and characterization, the same spontaneous and 
satirical humor, and the same sympathy with the crude, 
picturesque life of early Cahfornia, that was felt in his first 
famous book of stories. 

So brief a survey of the field of fiction that portrays the 
varied phases of provincial life in America can in the 
nature of things be only suggestive, — no pretense is made 
that it is comprehensive or exhaustive ; but enough has been 
glanced at in the groupings of this volume to show how at- 
tractive is the field, and how much richness of enjoyment 
lies in the reading and study of American literature from 
this point of view. 



CHAPTER XVI 

"THE VIRGINIAN" BY OWEN WISTER 

A CLOSE scrutiny of heroes in fiction is likely to reveal the 
fact that very few of them are actually men, and the highest 
praise bestowed on " Tom Jones " is said to be that of a 
great critical authority who remarked of the novel, " This 
is not a book, but a man." It would not, perhaps, be far 
from a fair critical estimate to say of " The Virginian " that 
this is a man ; a Virginian, to be sure, with his soft, drawl- 
ing tones and his chivalrous attitude toward the weak, — 
but a man also, in the larger sense, who gathers up into 
his hard and dramatic life the virile elements of the great 
West. This is a real man, who would have been different 
in his physical and mental and moral make-up if he had 
lived under a less rugged and exacting environment than the 
high plains of Wyoming in the period between 1874 and 
1890. As a cow-puncher, — a horseman with his '"pastur- 
ing thousands," he is a vanishing type, broadly and lastingly 
portrayed. And it is a matter of good fortune that one so 
conversant with the type and its environment should have 
had the privilege of giving them a permanent place in 
American literature ; for, as Mr. Wister himself says of his 
plainsman in his suggestive introduction "To the Reader," 
"You will no more see him gallop out of the unchanging 
silence than you will see Columbus on the unchanging sea 
come sailing from Palos with his caravels." 

215 



2i6 Provincial Types in the Far West 

The first view that the narrator of " The Virginian " got 
of his prospective hero was through a Pulhnan car window 
at Medicine Bow, where the roping of some cow ponies in a 
corral near the water-tank of the raihoad was going on 
rather unsuccessfully. One pony in particular defied an I 
evaded the most skillful of the cowboys, whose humorous 
curses could be heard even through the glass of the car 
windows. No stratagem or skill in hurUng the rope seemed 
able to catch the agile and swift-eyed pony. Suddenly a 
man sitting on the high gate of the corral, looking on, 
cHmbed down " with the undulations of a tiger, smooth 
and easy, as if his muscles flowed beneath his skin." The 
others had visibly hurled the rope, some even shoulder 
high; but this man's arm seemed neither to lift nor move. 
He apparently held the rope low down, by his leg ; then 
"like a sudden snake," the noose shot out its full length 
and fell true ; and the thing was done. " As the captured 
pony walked in with a sweet, church- door expression, our 
train moved slowly on to the station, and a passenger 
approvingly remarked, 'That man knows his business.'" 

A lost trunk had so disconcerted Judge Henry's guest, — 
who tells the story, — that he was oblivious of the shin- 
ing antelope among the sage-brush and the great sunset 
light of Wyoming, when his attention was diverted by a 
dialogue between a man with a gentle, drawling Southern 
voice, and another who was addressed as "Uncle Hughey." 
The narrator stepped to the door of the baggage-room and 
noted the man with the Southern drawl. It was "The 
Virginian." "Lounging there at ease against the wall was 
a slim young giant, more beautiful than pictures." His 
soft, broad hat, pushed back, a loose-knotted, dull-scarlet 
handkerchief sagging from his throat, one thumb hooked 



" The Virginian " 217 

into his slanting cartridge-belt, and boots and overalls 
white with dust that indicated long travel through the 
country, — these were evident at a glance. " The weather- 
beaten bloom of his face shone through it [the dust] duskily, 
as the ripe peaches look upon their trees in a dry season. 
But no dinginess of travel or shabbiness of attire could 
tarnish the splendor that radiated from his youth and 
strength." 

Judge Henry's guest suggested to the Virginian that his 
valise would be sufficient for a day or two, — when the lost 
trunk might be sent for, — and that they might start for the 
Judge's home at once if it didn't bring them there too late. 
It was then sunset. Whereat the Virginian coolly remarked : 
" It's two hundred and sixty-three miles." So that a night 
in Medicine Bow on the top of a counter was the only alter- 
native for the Judge's guest. And such a night the " tender- 
foot " had never seen ! For it was on that night in a saloon 
that the tenderfoot learned what manner of man the soft- 
spoken Virginian was. 

Five or six players sat in a corner at a round table where 
counters were piled, among them the Virginian and Trampas, 
the dealer of the cards. Such expressions as " Why didn't 
you stay in Arizona?" and "Well, Arizona's no place for 
amatures," stirred something of a sensation in the room, 
for they were evidently directed at the Virginian, who the 
year before had paid a visit to Arizona. The ugliness in the 
voice of Trampas, the dealer, was due to the fact that he 
was losing to the Virginian, who was a stranger to him. 
When it tame the Virginian's turn to bet, or leave the 
game, he deliberated a moment or two, — long enough for 

the insulting Trampas to say, " Your bet, you son-of-a ." 

Suddenly the Virginian's pistol came out, and holding it in 



21 8 Provincial Types in the Far West 

his hand, unaimed, on the table, and speaking in his charac- 
teristically soft drawl, — though a little longer drawn than 
usual — he gave his orders to Trampas, "When you call me 
that, sjuiky '' Yes, the voice was gentle. But in my ears it 
seemed as if somewhere the bell of death was ringing ; and 
silence, like a stroke, fell on the large room." Some were 
crouching, and some shifting their positions, while the nar- 
rator, in his ignorance of what it all meant, stood stock-still. 
It meant to Trampas either "■ the choice to back down or 
draw his steel." And he didn't draw his steel. There were 
no more contemptuous remarks on the part of Trampas 
about " amatures," for in the person of the black-haired, 
soft-voiced Virginian was a proved expert in the art of 
self-preservation. 

The admiration of one of the card-dealers for the Virgin- 
ian's superb quickness and coolness was thus expressed to a 
player who had evidently been very nervous over the situa- 
tion : " You got ready to dodge. You had no call to be 
concerned. . . . It's not a brave man that's dangerous. 
It's the cowards that scare me." Having illustrated his 
last remark by a recent shooting incident in the saloon, the 
dealer continued : " And that's why I never hke to be 
around where there's a coward. You can't tell. He'll 
always go to shooting before it's necessary, and there's no 
security who he'll hit. But a man Hke that black-headed 
guy is " (the dealer indicated the Virginian) " need never 
worry you. And there's another point why there's no need 
to worry about him : if II be too late! " 

That night Judge Henry's guest learned more ©f the Vir- 
ginian's resourcefulness and humor ; and on their long and 
adventurous ride together across the country the Virginian's 
personal dignity and strong self-respect, his droll wit and 



" The Virginian " 219 

shrewd penetration, his courage and splendid " nerve," and 
his love and mastery of horses, were all abundantly illus- 
trated. Near the end of their journey together they were 
met by a friend of the Virginian's — Mr. Taylor by name — 
who gave the news that Bear Creek was to have a school- 
house and a " schoolmarm." Mr. Taylor handed the 
Judge's guest a letter from a possible candidate in the East, 
— Miss Mary Stark Wood of Bennington, Vermont, — and 
wanted to know how it "sized up" with the letters "they 
write back East." The signature was of especial signifi- 
cance to the Virginian, — it read, " Your very sincere spin- 
ster " ; whereat Mr. Taylor guessed she was forty, but the 
Virginian, twenty. " Her handwriting ain't like any I've 
saw," commented Mr. Taylor. " But Bear Creek would 
not object to that, provided she knows 'rithmetic and 
George Washington and them kind of things." The Vir- 
ginian's comment, as he sat looking at the letter, was some- 
what penetrating : " I expect she is not an awful sincere 
spinster. . . . Your real spinster don't speak of her lot 
that easy." 

Mr. Wister's talent for humorous narrative of an unusual 
sort is seen at its best in the chapter called " Em'ly," which 
describes the forlorn and ridiculous attempts of an " old- 
maid " hen to be a mother, — her attempts including re- 
peated " settings " on potatoes, onions, soap, green peaches, 
and oval stones, and her adoptions embracing bantams, 
young turkeys, and setter puppies ! The Virginian's joyous 
sense of humor, his tender sympathy, and his quick power 
of drawing human analogies are made an inseparable part 
of this unique chapter, in which the Virginian and the 
Judge's guest are drawn so intimately together. 

Four days of train and thirty hours of stage had brought 



220 Provincial Types in the Far West 

Miss Mary Stark Wood to the crossing of a river on the 
Western plains. She had refused to marry, back in Ben- 
nington, Vermont, the young man of " prospects " whom 
she liked but did not love. This refusal was against her 
mother's wishes, but was supported by the stout spirit of 
her great-aunt over at Dunbarton, who believed in marry- 
ing for love. And thus Molly Wood, with something of 
the spirit of her great colonial ancestress, Molly Stark, was 
trying to be independent and self-supporting, and had 
pledged herself to become the first teacher in the new 
Bear Creek schoolhouse in far-off Wyoming. 

It was at sunrise, that, eternally lurching along across 
the alkali, the stage reached the edge of a river. The 
driver had had on the box with him, as a companion, only a 
bottle, which had proved too strong for him. As the stage 
descended into the river for fording, it lurched over to one 
side, two wheels sank down over an edge, and the seat on 
which Miss Molly Wood sat careened so threateningly that the 
young woman put her head out of the stage door and tremu- 
lously asked if anything was wrong. But the driver was too 
much absorbed with profanity and the lash to notice her. 
However, a tall rider came close against the buried axles, 
and took the young woman out of the stage upon his horse 
so suddenly that she screamed. There were splashes, she 
saw a rolling flood, and then she was lifted down upon the 
bank. The rider gave a word of encouragement, insisted 
on the stage-driver's throwing away his bottle, and, swinging 
into his saddle, was off before the rescued woman could 
frame her belated thanks. Her rescuer was the Virginian ; 
and later in the season he came alone to the same crossing 
of the river, which now was a bed of dry sand, with here 
and there a pool. Regarding the extremely safe channel, 



"The Virginian" 221 

where the rushing river formerly had been, he meditatively 
said : " She cert'nly wouldn't need to grip me so close this 
mawnin'. I reckon it will mightily astonish her when I tell 
her how harmless the torrent is lookin'." Passing a slice of 
bread covered with sardines to his pony he continued : 
"You're a plumb pie-biter, you Monte." Monte rubbed 
his nose on his master's shoulder. " I wouldn't trust you 
with berries and cream. No, seh ; not though yu' did 
rescue a drownin' lady." 

The dance at the barbecue, given by the Swinton Brothers 
at their Goose Egg ranch on Bear Creek, was particularly 
notable for the way in which Miss Molly Wood refused to 
waltz with the Virginian without an introduction, although 
she knew him perfectly well as the man who had rescued her 
from her plight in the stage. But the Virginian, not to be 
so easily defeated, begged her pardon, and, bringing up a 
common friend, asked to be presented in due form. It was 
while she was dancing with some of the married men that 
the Virginian, with his characteristic love of a practical 
joke, exchanged the offspring of these same men, and did 
it so skillfully that the fathers and mothers reached home 
without recognizing the exchange and the joke. His 
finesse in diverting responsibility and his later confession 
at the most opportune time are very happily portrayed by 
Mr. Wister. 

Before the beginning of festivities that evening, while 
some of the cowboys, including Chalkeye, Nebrasky, 
Trampas, and Honey Wiggin, were stretched on the ground 
about the steer that was being roasted whole, some rather 
uncomplimentary allusions were made to the new school- 
teacher, Miss Molly Wood, by Trampas. Suddenly he found 
the Virginian standing over him in a threatening attitude : 



222 Provincial Types in the Far West 

and when ordered by the former to stand up and confess 
himself a Uar, Trampas sullenly obeyed, under the domi- 
nating power of the Virginian's eyes. " The eye of a man 
is the prince of deadly weapons." Then the Virginian 
spoke : " Keep a-standin' still. I ain' going to trouble yu' 
long. In admittin' yourself to be a liar you have spoke God's 
truth for onced. Honey Wiggin, you and me and the boys 
have hit town too frequent for any of us to play Sunday on 
the balance of the gang." The Virginian paused to observe 
the eifect of his action and words on " Public Opinion, 
seated around in carefully inexpressive attention," and then 
modestly continued: "We ain't a Christian outfit a little 
bit, and maybe we have most forgotten what decency feels 
like. But I reckon we haven't////;;/*^ forgot what it means." 

An illustration of the Virginian's mental independence, 
which prevented the young school-teacher from playing 
constantly the part of patron and superior, was seen in 
his characteristic discussion of the idea of equality : " I'll 
tell you what, equality is a great big bluff. It's easy called. 
... I look around and I see folks movin' up or movin' 
down, winners or losers everywhere. All luck, of course. 
But since folks can be born that different in their luck, 
where's your equahty? No, seh ! call your failure luck, or 
call it laziness, wander around the words, prospect all yu' 
mind to, and yu'll come out the same old trail of inequality." 
Pausing a moment, and looking at the woman he intended 
to win by his love, he added : " Some holds four aces, and 
some holds nothin', and some poor fello' gets the aces and 
no show to play 'em; but a man has got to prove himself 
my equal before I'll believe him." 

The Judge's guest — the narrator of the story — had ex- 
pected, on his return visit from the East, to be riding soon 



" The Virginian " 223 

with the Virginian among " the clean hills of Sunk Creek." 
What was his surprise and gratification, as he walked into 
Colonel Cyrus Jones's eating palace in Omaha, to see sitting 
at a table, alone, the Virginian himself. The palace itself 
was a curious phase in the development of Western archi- 
tecture. " It was a shell of wood, painted with golden em- 
blems, — the steamboat, the eagle, the Yosemite, — and a 
live bear ate gratuities at its entrance. Weather permitting, 
it opened upon the world as a stage upon the audience. 
You sat in Omaha's whole sight and dined, while Omaha's 
dust came and settled upon the refreshments. It is gone 
the way of the Indian and the buffalo, for the West is grow- 
ing old. You should have seen the palace and sat there. 
In front of you passed rainbows of men, — Chinese, Indian 
chiefs, Africans, General Miles, younger sons, Austrian nobil- 
ity, wide females in pink. Our continent drained prismati- 
cally through Omaha once." 

As the narrator was passing, there came floating out from 
" the palace " the language of Colonel Cyrus Jones. He 
stood at the rear of his palace in gray flowery mustaches 
and a Confederate uniform, and announced the wishes of the 
guests to the cook through a hole. After the Virginian's 
characteristically undemonstrative welcome of the Judge's 
guest, who had entered the restaurant to be " fanned " by 
the breezy vocabulary of the Colonel, the cow-puncher 
observed, as he looked about on the other guests with critical 
attention, that "Them that comes hyeh don't eat. They 
feed. ... D' yu' reckon they find joyful di-gestion in this 
swallo'-an'-get-out trough ? " To his friend's inquiry as to what 
he was in such a place for, he philosophically remarked : " Oh, 
pshaw ! When yu' can't have what you choose, yu' just 
choose what you have." And he took the bill of fare. 



224 Provincial Types in the Far West 

The Virginian noticed on the elaborately French menu a 
special item, Rrogs' legs a la Delmonico ; and he asked his 
friend rather incredulously if they were " true anywheres." 
And on its being explained that Delmonico in New York 
and Augustin in Philadelphia actually made a specialty of 
frogs' legs, the Virginian said, with an engaging smile, 
" There's not a little bit o' use in lyin' to me this mawnin'. 
I ain't goin' to awdeh anything's laigs." The Judge's guest, 
however, was in an experimental mood ; and, curious to see 
how Colonel Cyrus Jones would handle the unwonted order, 
he asked for frogs' legs. "'Wants frogs' legs, does he?' 
shouted Colonel Cyrus Jones. He fixed his eye upon me, 
and it narrowed to a slit. * Too many brain workers break- 
fasting before yu' came in, professor,' said he. ' Missionary 
ate the last leg off me just now. Brown the wheat ! ' he 
commanded, through the hole to the cook, for some one 
had ordered hot cakes. 

" * I'll have fried aiggs,' said the Virginian. ' Cooked 
both sides.' 

"' White wings ! ' sang the Colonel through the hole. 
'Let 'em fly up and down.' 

" * Coffee an' no milk,' said the Virginian. 

" ' Draw one in the dark ! ' the Colonel roared. 

" * And beefsteak, rare.' 

" ' One slaughter in the pan, and let the blood drip ! ' 

" * I should like a glass of water, please,' said I. The 
Colonel threw me a look of pity. ' One Missouri and ice for 
the professor ! ' he said." The process of ordering was 
ended, and the Virginian's only comment was, as he looked 
at the Colonel, "That fellow's a right live man." The 
" Colonel" proved to be Scipio le Moyne, who later served 
the Virginian in a crisis as the expert broiler of frogs. Dur- 



" The Virginian " 225 

ing breakfast the Virginian's curiosity concerning Delmonico 
and frogs' legs returned, and his companion was able to give 
him a good deal of information about the career of Lorenzo 
Delmonico, which the Virginian later put to such brilliant use 
in his competing frog story. " Mighty inter-estin'," he said — 
" mighty. He could just take Httle old o'rn'ry frawgs, and 
dandy 'em up to suit the bloods. Mighty inter-estin'. I 
expaict, though, his cookin' would give an outraiged ^omach 
to a plain-raised man." 

Despite the modesty of the Virginian, it developed that he 
had been promoted by Judge Henry, his employer, to be 
deputy foreman, and was on his way to Chicago with twenty 
carloads of steers and half a dozen cowboys. And one of 
his chief responsibiHties lay in the necessity of getting these 
cowboys safely back to the Judge's ranch in Wyoming, past 
all the temptations of cities, and in spite of the malevolent 
maneuvers of Trampas, his irreconcilable enemy. The cow- 
boys beside the railway track in Omaha were indulging in a 
game of poker, while the Virginian, sitting with his friend on 
the top of a car, was contemplating the sandy shallows of 
the Platte. When asked by his friend why he didn't take a 
hand in the game, the Virginian contemptuously replied, 
"Poker? With them kittens?" He suddenly took out of 
his pocket a copy of " Kenilworth " that Miss Molly Wood 
had let him have, and turning the volume over slowly in his 
hand without opening it, he remarked reflectively, " Queen 
Elizabeth would have played a mighty pow'ful game." 
" Poker ? " said his friend. " Yes, seh. Do you expaict Europe 
has got any queen equal to her at present? " When doubt 
was expressed, the Virginian gave one of his historical judg- 
ments in characteristic form. " Victoria 'd get pretty nigh 
slain sliding chips out agaynst Elizabeth. Only, mos' prob'ly 
Q 



226 Provincial Types in the Far West 

Victoria she'd insist on a half-cent limit. You have read 
this hyeh ' Kenilworth ' ? Well, deal Elizabeth ace high, an' 
she could scare Robert Dudley, with a full house, plumb out 
o' the bettin'." On the unquestioning assent of his com- 
panion, the Virginian continued, "And if Essex's play got 
next her too near, I reckon she'd have stacked the cyards. 
Say, d'yu' remember Shakespeare's fat man?" 

An answer in the affirmative led the Virginian to give his 
candid judgment on Shakespeare and his literary work, and 
to express his regret that the great dramatist was ignorant 
of the possibilities of poker. "Ain't that grand? Why, he 
makes men talk the way they do in life. I reckon he couldn't 
get printed to-day. It's a right down shame Shakespeare 
couldn't know about poker. He'd have had Falstaff playing 
all day at that Tearsheet outfit. And the Prince would have 
beat him." The Virginian felt sure, too, that Falstaff would 
have had enough brains to play whist. " You can play 
whist with your brains — brains and cyards. Now, cyards 
are only one o' the manifestations of poker in this hyeh 
world. One o' the shapes yu' fool with it in when the day's 
work is oveh. If a man is built like that Prince boy was 
built (and it's away down deep beyond brains), he'll play 
winnin' poker with whatever hand he's holdin' when the 
trouble begins. Maybe it will be a mean, triflin' army, or an 
empty six-shooter, or a lame hawss, or maybe just nothin' 
but his natural countenance. 'Most any old thing will do for 
a fello' hke that Prince boy to play poker with." 

Leaving the Virginian with his uncertain cowboys and his 
two trains of steers bound for Chicago, Judge Henry's pro- 
spective guest, on his autumn holiday, was making his way 
through the Black Hills in a saddle ; but on account of the 
steady downpour he was only too glad to change to a seat 



" The Virginian " 227 

in the stage. As he dimbed in over the wheel somebody 
on the inside considerately inquired, " Six legs inside this 
jerky to-night?" The asker of the question was none other 
than " Colonel " Cyrus Jones, formerly of the eating palace in 
Omaha, whose conversational power was wholly undimin- 
ished. He gave an early introduction of himself: " Scipio 
le Moyne, from GaUipolice, Ohio. The eldest of us always 
gets called Scipio. It's French. But us folks have been 
white for a hundred years." Scipio was limber and light- 
muscled, and skillfully avoided bruises as the "jerky " swayed 
or plunged. " He had a strange, long, jocular nose, very 
wary-looking, and a bleached blue eye." "Shorty," the 
third occupant of the stage, was what his name implied, and 
the joltings of the jerky seemed to hurt him almost every 
time. " He was light-haired and mild. Think of a yellow 
dog that is lost, and fancies each newcomer in sight is going 
to turn out his master, and you will have Shorty." 

The intimacy of the three travelers was suddenly deep- 
ened by their unavailing efforts to catch the Northern Pacific 
train at Medora. It had changed its schedule time. Scipio 
and Shorty shot from the jerky in advance of the Judge's 
guest, who was encumbered by a valise. They dashed 
through sand and " knee-high grease wood " in their race 
for the train, a piece of stray wire springing up and clutch- 
ing the carrier of the vahse, and tin cans spinning from 
under his feet. The loss of the train meant to them a loss 
of twenty-four hours ; but despite their desperate racing 
and shouting and waving of hats they were all left behind. 
Scipio, as he saw the train insultingly move off, dropped 
philosophically into a walk ; but the other two, overtaking 
him, ran madly forward to the empty track. 

The carrier of the valise kicked it and then sat on it, 



228 Provincial Types in the Far West 

speechless with wrath ; Shorty gave way to uncontrollable 
lament, detailing all his woes to the unsympathetic air ; but 
Scipio, the superior, narrowed his bleached blue eyes to 
slits, as he watched the rear car fading to westward, and ad- 
dressed the vanishing train : " Think you've got me left, 
do yu'? Just because yu' ride through this country on a 
rail, do yu' claim yu' can find your way around? I could 
take yu' out ten yards in the brush and lose yu' in ten sec- 
onds, you spangle-roofed hobo ! Leave 7ne behind ! you 
recent blanket-mortgage yearlin' ! You plush-lined, nickel- 
plated, whistlin' wash room, d'yu' figure I can't go East 
just as soon as West? Or I'll stay right here if it suits me, 
yu' dude-inhabited hot-box ! " Scipio's epithets increased 
in volume and emphasis till they became unprintable, and 
then he gradually descended from his climax to express 
sympathy with the train for not having a mother. 

To the immense surprise and pleasure of Judge Henry's 
guest a slow, drawling Southern voice, the voice of the Vir- 
ginian, suddenly expressed his sorrow over his friend's loss 
of breath in pursuit of the train, and inquired if the valise 
was suffering any. There sat the Virginian, with a news- 
paper, on the rear platform of a caboose attached to a 
freight train westward bound. His cowboys were inside, 
and he himself carried the air of a man for whom things 
were "going smooth." He had evidently delivered his 
steers in Chicago and was returning to Sunk Creek ranch. 
He turned to Scipio with the remark that " these hyeh 
steam cyars make a man's language mighty nigh as speedy 
as his travel." *' So yu' heard me speakin' to the express," 
said Scipio. " Well, I guess, sometimes I — See here," he 
exclaimed, under the grave scrutiny of the Virginian, " I 
may have talked some, but I walked a whole lot. You didn't 



" The Virginian ** 229 

catch me squandering no speed." The Virginian remarked 
that he had noticed that in Scipio's case thinking came 
quicker than running ; whereupon Scipio observed : " Oh, 
I could tell yu'd been enjoyin' us ! Observin' somebody 
else's scrape always kind o' rests me too. Maybe you're a 
philosopher, but maybe there's a pair of us drawd in this deal." 

From Scipio's legs the Virginian judged that the former 
was used to the saddle, but from his hands he inferred that 
he had not been roping steers very recently. And he sud- 
denly asked, " Been cookin' or something? " To which the 
spirited Scipio retorted : " Say, tell my future some now. 
Draw a conclusion from my mouth." " I'm right dis- 
tressed," returned the Southerner, "we've not a drop in 
the outfit." " Oh, drink with me uptown ! " cried the hos- 
pitable Scipio, — " I'm pleased to death with yu'." Glanc- 
ing where the saloons stood behind the station, the Virginian 
shook his head ; and Scipio plaintively insisted : " Why, it 
ain't a bit far to whisky from here ! Step down, now. 
Scipio le Moyne's my name. Yes, you're lookin' for my 
brass ear-rings. But there ain't no ear-rings on me. I've 
been white for a hundred years. Step down. I've a forty- 
dollar thirst." The Virginian's only response was the be- 
ginning of a remark about Scipio's " being white," when 
from the inside of the caboose came the howled-out chorus 
of a cowboy song, and the train began to move off. Sud- 
denly the Virginian stood up and offered to this new-found 
acquaintance a forty-dollar job if he would save " that thirst." 
" Why, you're talkin' business ! " cried Scipio, and leaped 
aboard. 

As the Virginian and Scipio le Moyne continued in dia- 
logue, one of the group on the inside came out on the 
platform of the caboose, slamming the door behind him. 



230 Provincial Types in the Far West 

" H 1 ! " cried the man, at sight of the distant town. " I 

told you," addressing the Virginian threateningly, " I told 
you I was going to get a bottle here." " Have your bottle, 
then," said the deputy foreman, and kicked him off into 
Dakota. The Virginian's pistol followed the direction of 
his boot ; so that the man sat quiedy in Dakota, watching 
the train moving on into Montana, and making no objection. 
At a safe distance, he rose and made his way toward the 
region of the saloons. It was the cook that had thus sud- 
denly parted company with the Virginian's " outfit," and the 
Virginian could not forego expressing his disgust as he bol- 
stered his pistol. " This is the only step I have had to take 
this whole trip ; " and then he added regretfully, " So nyeh 
back home ! " 

Scipio's interest in his new-found employer was so much 
intensified by this incident that he asked Judge Henry's 
guest if he had known the Virginian long. Being answered 
** Fairly," Scipio looked with admiration at the Virginian's 
back, and spoke judicially, "Well, start awful early when 
yu' go to fool with him, or he'll make you feel onpunctual." 
The Southerner, tilting his head toward the noise in the 
caboose, again expressed his regret that, after having the 
cow-punchers under his control for almost three thousand 
miles, he should now have been compelled to part with one 
of them. " I had the boys plumb contented. Away along 
as far as Saynt Paul I had them reconciled to my authority. 
Then this news about gold had to strike us." " And they're 
a-dreamin' nuggets and Parisian bowleyvards," sympatheti- 
cally suggested Scipio. The Virginian smiled his gratitude, 
and, regaining his usual relish of things, continued in the line 
of Scipio's suggestion, " Fortune is shinin' bright and bhndin' 
to their delicate young eyes." 



"The Virginian'* 231 

The Virginian asserted his behef that all his cowboys 
would return with him to Sunk Creek, " accordin' to the 
Judge's awdehs." " Never a calf of them will desert to 
Rawhide, for all their dangerousness. . . . Only one is left 
now that don't sing." Turning to Scipio le Moyne, he re- 
marked that the man he had parted with was the cook, 
" and I will ask yu' to replace him. Colonel." At the word 
" colonel " Scipio opened his mouth in astonishment. 
" Colonel ! Say ! " He stared at the Virginian and asked 
him if he had met him at " the palace " in Omaha. " Not 
exackly met," replied the Southerner. '' I was praisent one 
mawnin' las' month when this gentleman awdehed frawgs' 
laigs." 

Hereupon the surprised but versatile Scipio, alias the 
"Colonel," explained at length his difficult position in 
Omaha. " Sakes and saints, but that was a mean position ! 
... I had to tell all comers anything all day. Stand up 
and jump language hot off my brain at 'em. And the pay 
don't near compensate for the drain on the system. I don't 
care how good a man is, you let him keep a-tappin' his 
presence of mind right along, without taking a lay-off, and 
you'll have him sick. Yes, sir. You'll hit his nerves. So I 
told them they could hire some fresh man, for I was goin' 
back to punch cattle or fight Indians, or take a rest some- 
how, for I didn't propose to get jaded, and me only twenty- 
five years old." 

Scipio confessed that the regular Colonel Cyrus Jones 
had long ago departed this life, but because of " the palace's " 
large business the management continued a live bear on the 
outside and a pretended "Colonel" within. "And it's a 
turruble mean position. Course I'll cook for yu'. Yu've 
a dandy memory for faces." " I wasn't quite convinced till 



232 Provincial Types in the Far West 

I kicked him off, and you gave that shut to your eyes again/' 
explained the Virginian. 

The appearance at the door of the caboose of Trampas, 
the Virginian's scheming enemy, and his inquiry for Schoff- 
ner, the cook, whom the deputy foreman had kicked from 
the platform, called out the reply of the Southerner, " I 
expaict he'll have got his bottle by now, Trampas." Tram- 
pas, looking from one to another on the platform, asked 
curiously, "Didn't he say he was coming back?" "He 
reminded me," said the Virginian, " he was going for a 
bottle, and afteh that he didn't wait to say a thing." When 
Trampas insisted that Schoffner had told him he was coming 
back, the Southerner, with his quiet and characteristic 
humor, replied : " I don't reckon he has come, not without 
he dumb up ahaid somewhere. An' I mus' say, when he 
got off he didn't look Hke a man does when he has the 
intention o' returnin'." And after another unsatisfactory 
question Trampas abruptly returned to the inside of the 
caboose. 

"Is he the member who don't sing?" asked the pene- 
trating Scipio. " That's the specimen," answered the South- 
erner. " He don't seem musical in the face," said Scipio. 
"Pshaw ! " returned the Virginian. "Why, you surely ain't 
the man to mind ugly mugs — when they're hollow ! " After 
the Virginian himself had retreated into the caboose, Scipio 
inquired of Judge Henry's guest his opinion as to whether 
the Virginian would succeed in getting his cowboys back to 
Sunk Creek. To the answer that the Southerner had said 
he would, and that he was a man with the " courage of his 
convictions," Scipio skeptically exclaimed : " That ain't near 
courage enough to have ! There's times in life when a man 
has got to have courage without convictions — without them 



" The Virginian ** 123 

— or he is no good. Now your friend is that deep consti- 
tooted that you don't know and I don't know what he's 
thinkin' about all this." Scipio le Moyne, as a type of the 
breezy, slangy, widely experienced Westerner, who is shrewdly 
observant, swift in his judgments of human nature and human 
motive, and humorously versatile in emergencies, is one of 
the best-drawn and most interesting figures in the book ; and 
we are not surprised that the Virginian relishes the originality 
and imaginative sympathy of the man. 

The Virginian's quiet mastery of men as illustrated in his 
getting his cowboys back from Chicago despite the temp- 
tations of cities, the appeal made to their greediness by the 
rumors of gold at Rawhide, and the malevolent influence of 
Trampas, — the Virginian's implacable enemy, — recalls the 
elaborate and sublimely humorous " frawg " story, which the 
Virginian found it necessary to tell to beat Trampas and his 
partisans at their own malicious game of ridicule. That story 
meant all the difference between success and failure for the 
Virginian in his important trip to the East as deputy fore- 
man for Judge Henry, and it was effective enough to ac- 
complish its purpose of keeping the men together till they 
reached Sunk Creek. 

In discussing theology and parsons with Judge Henry's 
guest, the Virginian had certain original and unhackneyed 
points of view that showed the earnest and rational side of 
the man. He had inquired as to the number of religions 
in the world, and being told there were at least fifteen that 
were supposed to have the same God as an object of worship, 
the Virginian rather skeptically exclaimed : " One God and 
fifteen religions. That's a right smart of religions for just 
one God." The laugh on the narrator's part at this com- 
ment led the Virginian to remark in addition : " Do you 



234 Provincial Types in the Far West 

think they ought to be fifteen varieties of good people? 
. . . There ain't fifteen. There ain't two. There's one 
kind. And when I meet it I respect it. It is not praying 
nor preaching that has ever caught me and made me 
ashamed of myself, but one or two people I have knowed 
that never said a superior word to me. They thought more 
o' me than I deserved, and that made me behave better 
than I naturally wanted to. . . . And if ever I was to have 
a son or somebody I set store by, I would wish their lot to 
be to know one or two good folks mighty well — men or 
women — women preferred." "As for parsons," he con- 
tinued with a somewhat deprecating gesture, " I reckon 
some parsons have a right to tell yu' to be good. The 
bishop of this hyeh Territory has a right. But I'll tell yu' 
this : a middlin' doctor is a pore thing, and a middlin' 
lawyer is a pore thing ; but keep me from a middlin' man 
of God." Such a " middlin' man of God " the Virginian 
found in Dr. MacBride, the missionary to the cowboys, 
whom he wickedly persuaded to spend most of the night in 
prayer and spiritual counsel for the Virginian's sin-stricken 
soul. 

His promotion to be foreman of Judge Henry's ranch 
for a long time prevented the Virginian from riding over to 
Bear Creek to see Miss Molly Wood, the school-teacher ; and 
finally, at the end of the winter, he was driven to write her 
a letter which illustrated, beside his devotion to her, his 
improvement in spelling and penmanship, to which he had 
given himself in his leisure time during the winter. After 
speaking of the early spring, he mentions the fact that 
" where the sun gets a chance to hit the earth strong all 
day it is green and has flowers too, a good many. You can 
see them bob and mix together in the wind." He also tells 




" By his side the girl walking and cheering him forward. 

Page 332. 
Copyright by the Macmillan Company. 



" The Virginian " 235 

his sweetheart what nC has been reading, and his Hterary 
judgments are sincere and original if not conventional : " I 
have read that play ' Othello.' No man should write down 
such a thing. Do you know if it is true ? I have seen one 
worse affair down in Arizona. He killed his Httle child as 
well as his wife but such things should not be put down in 
fine language for the public. I have read Romeo and 
Juliet. That is beautiful language but Romeo is no man. 
I like his friend Mercutio that gets killed. He is a man. 
If he had got Juliet there would have been no foolishness 
and trouble." 

One part of the letter in particular brought the color into 
the teacher's face and made her indignantly exclaim, " The 
outrageous wretch ! " It was the part about Emily, the 
hen : " Did I ever tell you about a hen Emily we had here? 
She was venturesome to an extent I have not seen in other 
hens only she had poor judgment and would make no family 
ties. She would keep trying to get interest in the ties 
of others taking charge of Httle chicks and bantams and 
turkeys and puppies one time, and she thought most any- 
thing was an tgg. I will tell you about her sometime. She 
died without family ties one day while I was building a 
house for her to teach school in." It was an allegory, con- 
scious or unconscious, which the little school-teacher was 
swift to interpret. 

The wounded Virginian, lying beside the spring, and the 
heroic little descendant of Molly Stark, washing away the 
blood, tearing bandages, and loading his revolver, make two 
figures of surpassingly dramatic interest. And even of greater 
interest are they as he leans helplessly on his horse while 
she supports and encourages him till they reach her own 
home and she can help the delirious man to lie down on 



l^^S Provincial Types in the Far West 

her own bed. And then such persistent nursing-^ such tactful 
attention, such diversions in the way of quiet games at crib- 
bage and of reading aloud to the convalescent ! Among the 
delightful things in the book is the unique comment of the 
Virginian on Shakespeare and Browning. He had apologized 
for going to sleep over one of Jane Austen's novels which she 
had read to him ; he said by way of excuse that he thought 
he could keep awake if she read him " something that was 
a^ou^ something," Hke " Henry the Fourth " for instance. 
" The British king is fighting, and there is his son the prince. 
He cert'nly must have been a jim-dandy boy if that is all true. 
Only he would go around town with a mighty triflin' gang. 
They sported and they held up citizens. And his father 
hated his traveling with trash like them. It was right 
natural — the boy and the old man ! But the boy showed 
himself a man too. He killed a big fighter on the other 
side who was another jim-dandy — and he was sorry for 
having it to do." The Virginian grew enthusiastic in his 
recital of Prince Hal's adventures, and continued : " I under- 
stand most all of that. There was a fat man kept every- 
body laughing. He was awful natural too ; except yu' don't 
commonly meet 'em so fat. But the prince — that play 
is bed-rock, ma'am!" Browning's "How They Carried 
the Good News from Ghent to Aix " he pronounced good 
— and short; while an "Incident of the French Camp" he 
thought was even better, only " the last part drops." The 
closing stanza, which relates how the wounded boy, having 
given his message of victory, tells Napoleon that he is not 
only wounded but wounded unto death, fails to meet the 
approval of the Virginian. " ' Nay, I'm killed, sire,' " 
drawled the Virginian critically. "Now a man who was 
man enough to act like he did, yu' see, would fall dead 
without mentioning it." 



" The Virginian " 237 

From the dream and joy of an accepted lover to the 
catching and hanging of cattle-thieves (among them his 
once intimate friend, Steve) was a swift and painful transi- 
tion for the Virginian ; and one of the intensest and most 
dramatically written chapters in the book is that entitled 
"The Cottonwoods," in which his old friend Steve and 
another cattle-thief are portrayed in the terrible moments 
preceding death. In contrasting the manner of death of 
the two men, the Virginian had only admiration for his old 
friend Steve. " Well, he took dying as naturally as he took 
living. Like a man should. Like I hope to. . . . No 
play-acting nor last words. He just told good-by to the 
boys as we led his horse under the Hmb." In the Vir- 
ginian's view failure to die bravely was a sort of" treason to 
the brotherhood," and forfeited pity. " It was Steve's per- 
fect bearing that had caught his heart so that he forgot even 
his scorn of the other man." 

In expressing his sympathy for the weak-willed, shallow, 
amiable, and easily manipulated Shorty, who fell under the 
malign and finally fatal influence of Trampas, the Virginian 
differentiated the conditions of the West and the East in a 
striking and discriminating way: "Now back East you can 
be middling and get along. But if you go to try a thing on 
in this Western country, you've got to do it well. You've 
got to deal cyards well; you've got to steal well ; and if you 
claim to be quick with your gun you must be quick, for 
you're a public temptation, and some man will not resist 
trying to prove he is the quicker. You must break all the 
Commandments well in this Western country, and Shorty 
should have stayed in Brooklyn, for he will be a novice his 
livelong days," And the Virginian's judgment and prophecy 
were, alas ! too true ; for a Httle later, on " Superstition 



238 Provincial Types in the Far West 

Trail," they found the dead " novice " stretched by his 
extinct camp-fire, *'with his wistful, lost-dog face upward, 
and his thick yellow hair unparted as it had always been." 
He had been murdered from behind, and the treacherous, 
merciless hand of Trampas had done it. Shorty had blun- 
dered once too often. As the Virginian said, regretfully 
looking down on the dead body, " There was no natural 
harm in him, but you must do a thing well in this country." 
From the edge of a tableland the Virginian and his pro- 
spective bride could see the little town where on the fol- 
lowing day the bishop of Wyoming was to make them man 
and wife. " There lay the town in the splendor of Wyoming 
space. Around it spread the watered fields . . . making 
squares of green and yellow crops ; and the town was but 
a poor rag in the midst of this quilted harvest. After the 
fields to the east, the tawny plain began ; and with one faint 
furrow of river lining its undulations, it stretched beyond 
sight. But west of the town rose the Bow Leg Mountains, 
cool with still unmelted snows, and their dull blue gulfs of 
pine. From three cailons flowed three clear forks which 
began the river. Their confluence was above the town a 
good two miles ; it looked but a few paces from up here, 
while each side the river straggled the margin cottonwoods, 
like thin borders along a garden walk. Over all this map 
hung silence like a harmony, tremendous yet serene." No 
wonder the girl from the little Vermont hills whispered to 
her mountain lover, " How beautiful ! how I love it ! But, 
oh, how big it is ! " She leaned against him an instant, as if 
seeking a sort of shelter in his splendid strength ; and with 
closed eyes she saw a little village street in Vermont, and 
an ivy on an old front door, and her mother picking some 
yellow roses from a bush ! 



" The Virginian " 239 

A sudden sound made her open her eyes quickly, only to 
see her lover turned in his saddle and reaching for his pistol. 
A rider, who was a stranger to her, merely nodded to the 
Virginian as he passed by ; but out of his eyes looked " five 
years of gathered hate." It was Trampas, — Trampas who, 
courageous with whisky and baffled hate, was to give the 
Virginian till sundown to get out of town. To meet this 
murderous Trampas and run the imminent risk of death at 
his hands seemed to the Virginian the only course, — and 
this on the eve of his wedding day, the consummation of his 
patient and expectant love. The bishop opposed it, and 
his New England sweetheart drew back in horror from it, 
exclaiming, " If you do this, there can be no to-morrow for 
you and me." But despite it all, with a courage and self- 
sacrifice that were sublime, he met Trampas as the sun 
dropped behind the mountains, — those mountains to which 
on the morrow he had hoped to take his bride. He was 
standing where no one could approach him except from the 
front, for he remembered the fate of Shorty, who had been 
shot from behind. " A wind seemed to blow his sleeve off 
his arm, and he replied to it, and saw Trampas pitch for- 
ward. He saw Trampas raise his arm from the ground and 
fall again, and lie there, this time still. A little smoke was 
rising from the pistol on the ground, and he looked at his 
own, and saw the smoke flowing upward out of it. ' I expect 
that's all,' he said aloud ; " although, as he drew near the 
treacherous Trampas, he kept him covered with his weapon. 
The hand on the ground moved, two fingers twitched, and 
then ceased ; it was, in truth, all over. As he stood looking 
down at his inveterate enemy, the Virginian remarked aloud, 
" I told her it would not be me." 

The New England conscience of Molly Wood battled 



240 Provincial Types in the Far West 

with love and capitulated ; and the next day the Virginian 
and his strenuously won bride camped together beneath the 
fragrant pines of " the island," where the mountains had 
long before stirred the real poetry of the Virginian's virile 
but imaginative nature, — an ideal honeymoon for this heroic 
horseman of the plains who, so typical of the rough condi- 
tions about him, had yet an untainted heart of true romance. 



CHAPTER XVII 

"THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP AND OTHER STORIES" 
BY BRET HARTE 

The year that "The Luck of Roaring Camp" appeared, 
— the year 1871, — -there was published in Blackwood's 
Magazine in Edinburgh, a criticism of the short stories 
contained in the volume ; and as from the beginning Bret 
Harte has had a large and admiring circle of readers in 
Great Britain, who have regarded him as typically and 
uniquely American in his literary work, it is of interest to 
give a part of this earhest critical opinion. "This sketch 
['The Luck of Roaring Camp'], slight and brief as it is, 
answers the highest and noblest purpose of fiction. There 
is more in it than in scores of three-volume novels. . . . 
Nothing can be more rude or less lovely than the hfe here 
portrayed — nothing can be more simply true than the 
narrative. Here nothing is hidden, nothing excluded, no 
false gloss put on ; and yet the heart is touched, the mind 
elevated by the strange tale. There is neither condemna- 
tion nor horror of vice in it — vice being a matter of course 
in the community ; yet its tendency is more than virtuous, 
it is lofty and pure. The reader laughs, but it is with a tear 
in his eye, which is one of the highest luxuries of feeling." 
And from that day to this "The Luck of Roaring Camp" 
and its companion stories have been generally regarded as 
unique and convincing dramatic sketches of strange, virile 
K 241 



242 Provincial Types in the Far West 

Western types which could have existed only under the 
peculiar conditions of Californian Hfe in the early fifties. 

Deaths were common enough in " Roaring Camp," but 
births were not only a sensation, they were absolutely un- 
known. So that the expected birth of a child to ''Cherokee 
Sal," the only woman in the camp, despite the fact that she 
was of the abandoned sort, was stirring excitement in all 
and even sympathy in a few. "You go in there, Stumpy," 
said a prominent member of the camp, familiarly known 
as " Kentuck." " Go in there, and see what you can do. 
You've had experience in them things." Stumpy, who had 
in other parts been the alleged head of two families at one 
time, was approved as a choice by the crowd of loungers 
outside the rude cabin where the prospective mother lay, 
and, bowing to the will of the majority, he disappeared 
behind the cabin door to act as extempore surgeon and 
midwife. 

Outside, the assembled camp sat and waited and smoked. 
Among this lounging group of a hundred men there were 
some who were actual fugitives from justice, " some were 
criminal and all were reckless." Physically, there was no 
indication of their past lives written in their faces. " The 
greatest scamp had a Raphael face, with a profusion of 
blonde hair ; Oakhurst, a gambler, had the melancholy air 
and intellectual abstraction of a Hamlet; the coolest and 
most courageous man was scarcely over five feet in height, 
with a soft voice and an embarrassed, timid manner." Closer 
scrutiny might have brought out certain physical deficiencies 
in the matter of fingers, toes, and ears, — the strongest man 
had only three fingers on his right hand and the best shot 
had only one eye. 

About the fire of withered pine boughs bets were freely 



"The Luck of Roaring Camp" 243 

offered as to the result within the cabin, — three to five that 
" Sal would get through with it " and that the child would 
survive. There were side bets also on the sex and complex- 
ion of the expected stranger. Suddenly, above the swaying 
and moaning of the pines, the rush of the river, and the 
crackling of the fire, rose a sharp, querulous cry, — a cry 
unheard before in that far-away camp of rough miners. 
They rose to their feet as one man ; and although a barrel 
of gunpowder was proposed as a proper means of celebrat- 
ing, only a few revolvers went off, for report came that 
Cherokee Sal was sinking fast. 

Within an hour she died, and after the settling of some 
details the anxious crowd of men entered the cabin in single 
file. On a pine table, swathed in red flannel and deposited 
in a candle-box, lay the 'Mast arrival" at Roaring Camp. 
And beside the candle-box rested a hat. " Gentlemen," 
said the extempore midwife Stumpy, in a tone of some- 
what complacent authority, " Gentlemen will please pass in 
at the front door, round the table, and out at the back door. 
Them as wishes to contribute anything toward the orphan 
will find a hat handy." As the men passed by there were 
overheard comments like these : " Is that him?" " Mighty 
small specimen;" "Hasn't mor'n got the color;" "Ain't 
bigger nor a derringer." Among the contributions to the 
hat were a silver tobacco-box, a navy revolver, a gold speci- 
men, a beautifully embroidered handkerchief (from Oak- 
hurst, the gambler), a diamond breastpin, a slung shot, a Bible 
(" contributor not detected "), a silver teaspoon, a pair of sur- 
geon's shears, a Bank of England note for five pounds, and 
two hundred dollars in loose gold and silver coin. Only one 
little incident broke the monotony of this strange procession. 
As Kentuck bent over the candle-box the child turned and 



244 Provincial Types in the Far West 

in a, spasm of pain caught at his finger and held it fast for a 
mora^ht. When he got outside the cabin Kentuck, holding 
up his finger, remarked in a rather pleased tone to a com- 
panion, " He rastled with my finger, the d d little cuss ! " 

That night neither Stumpy nor Kentuck went to bed. 
When every one else had retired, Kentuck walked down to 
the river, whisthng reflectively, then up the gulch past the 
cabin, then part way down to the river again, until finally 
he returned and knocked at the cabin door, which was 
opened by Stumpy. " How goes it? " said Kentuck, look- 
ing at the candle-box. " All serene," returned Stumpy. 
"Anything up?" " Nothing." There was an embarrassing 
pause, and then the foolishly anxious Kentuck, holding up 

his finger, exclaimed : " Rastled with it, — the d d Uttle 

cuss," — and withdrew. 

In the ways and means suggested for rearing the new- 
born infant the suggestion that a female nurse be sent for 
met with no favor. No decent woman would be willing to 
make Roaring Camp her home, and " they didn't want any 
more of the other kind." It was at last decided to have 
Stumpy — in cooperation with "Jinny," the ass — con- 
tinue to act as wet-nurse, — there was something original and 
heroic about the idea that pleased the camp. Certain 
necessary articles for the baby were sent for to Sacramento. 
" Mind," said the treasurer, as he pressed a bag of gold- 
dust into the expressman's hand, " the best that can be got, 

— lace, you know, and fihgree-work and frills, — d n the 

cost ! " For some strange reason the child thrived and 
grew under the influence of Stumpy and the ass's milk, — 
"Me and that ass," Stumpy would say, "has been father 
and mother to him I Don't you," addressing the helpless 
bundle in the candle-box, " never go back on us." 



"The Luck of Roaring Camp" 245 

VV^hen the baby was a month old there came the necessity 
for a name, — he had generally been known as " The Kid," 
"Stumpy's Boy," and "The Coyote" ("an allusion to his 
vocal powers "). These, however, were felt to be vague and 
somewhat unsatisfactory ; and on the theory of Oakhurst, 
the gambler, that the child had brought " luck " to Roaring 
Camp, it was thenceforward to be called " Luck," with 
" Tommy " for a convenient prefix. No reference was made 
to the mother, and the father was unknown. " It's better," 
said the gambler, " to take a fresh deal all round. Call him 
Luck and start him fair." At the baby's christening, which 
was intended to be a screaming burlesque for which a muti- 
lated church service, a godfather, and an altar had been 
prepared, little Stumpy suddenly stepped before the ex- 
pectant crowd, and, looking them all stoutly in the faces, 
said : " It ain't my style to spoil fun, boys, but it strikes me 
that this thing ain't exactly on the squar'. It's playing it 
pretty low down on this yer baby to ring in fun on him that 
he ain't goin' to understand. And ef there's goin' to be any 
godfathers round, I'd like to see who's got any better rights 
than me." The first to break the silence that followed was 
the satirist himself, who acknowledged the propriety of 
Stumpy's position. Whereupon Stumpy proclaimed the 
baby, " Thomas Luck, according to the laws of the United 
States and the State of California, so help me God." 

The unconscious influence of child life on a miners' 
camp was soon illustrated and in a remarkable way. The 
cabin itself was kept scrupulously clean and whitewashed ; the 
rosewood cradle — "packed" eighty miles by mule — had, 
as Stumpy observed, " sorter killed the rest of the furniture," 
and so made necessary the rehabilitation of the whole cabin. 
The cabin's new interior so affected "Tuttle's grocery " that 



246 Provincial Types in the Far West 

it imported a carpet and mirrors. And even the personal 
appearance and cleanliness of the men was improved, for 
one of Stumpy's conditions was that " to hold The Luck " you 
had to be clean. One denial of such privilege had made 
Kentuck put on a clean shirt every afternoon, and he always 
came to see the baby " with his face still shining from his 
ablutions." For "Tommy's " repose, also, it seemed best to 
stop the shouting and yelhng that had given the unfortunate 
name to the camp, but vocal music was regarded as a sooth- 
ing element to be desired. So that " Man-o'-War Jack " 
was allowed to hold The Luck and sing his sailor song of 
"The Are//iusa, Seventy- Four " ; and it was a fine sight to see 
the rough old English sailor rocking from side to side and 
crooning to the child, while the men lay at full length under 
the trees at twilight, smoking, and hstening to the ninety 
stanzas of the rather melancholy song. "An indistinct idea 
that this was pastoral happiness pervaded the camp." In 
the words of " Cockney " Simmons, " This 'ere kind o' think 
is 'evingly." 

During the long summer days, on a blanket spread over 
pine boughs, The Luck would lie in the gulch, while the 
men were working below in the ditches ; and they got to 
decorating this improvised bed with flowers and sweet-smell- 
ing shrubs, and bringing him clusters of wild honeysuckle 
and azaleas. Unconsciously the child was interpreting for 
these rough, hard men the beauty of nature all about them ; 
and many were the wonderful treasures rescued from the 
woods and hillsides that " would do for Tommy." Natu- 
rally some remarkable stories as to The Luck's infantile sa- 
gacity were told, sometimes with a tinge of superstition in 
them. One day Kentuck, in a state of excitement, related 
an experience of his own : " I crep' up the bank just now, 



" The Luck of Roaring Camp " 247 

and dern my skin if he wasn't a-talking to a jay bird as 
was a sittin' on his lap. There they was, just as free and 
sociable as anything you please, a-jawin' at each other just 
like two cherrybums." 

It was a golden summer for Roaring Camp, — the times 
were " flush," and the claims yielded enormously. No im- 
migration was encouraged, all the available land about the 
camp was preempted, and a reputation for good shooting 
tended to keep the seclusion of the camp inviolate. But 
the expressman used sometimes to gratify outside curiosity 
by his wonderful stories of the camp : " They've a street up 
there in ' Roaring ' that would lay over any street in Red 
Dog. They've got vines and flowers round their houses, and 
they wash themselves twice a day. But they're mighty 
rough on strangers, and they worship an Ingin baby." 

With all this prosperity came the desire to do more for 
Tommy, and it was even proposed to build a hotel and 
invite one or two decent families so that The Luck could 
have the advantages of feminine society. But alas for 
their high resolves and purposes ! The winter of 1851 was 
remarkable for its heavy snows, and as the spring drew on 
every gulch became a roaring watercourse. The North 
Fork suddenly leaped its banks, dashed up the triangular 
valley of Roaring Camp, and in the night, amid the confu- 
sion of rushing water and crashing trees, Stumpy's cabin 
was carried away. Stumpy's body was found high up the 
gulch, but The Luck had disappeared. A relief boat, how- 
ever, brought news that it had picked up a man and an 
infant, almost exhausted. The searchers knew at a glance 
that here was Kentuck, crushed and bruised, but still hold- 
ing The Luck of Roaring Camp in his arms. The child 
was dead, and as they bent over Kentuck he opened his 



248 Provincial Types in the Far West 

eyes. "Dead ?" said Kentuck. "Yes, my man, and you 
are dying too." With a smile on his face the expiring man 
repeated, " Dying ! he's a-taking me with him. Tell the 
boys I've got The Luck with me now." And, together, 
Kentuck and the child floated out on the shadowy river that 
loses itself in an unknown sea. 

As strange, rough types in the picturesque and rugged 
mining camp of fifty years ago. Stumpy and Kentuck 
will long survive ; and through the art of the author 
unsuspected qualities of mind and heart are developed in 
them by the mute appeal of an abandoned woman's new- 
born child. 

A unique and striking figure among the "Outcasts of 
Poker Flat " is Mr. John Oakhurst, type of the imperturbable, 
smooth, daring, and irresistible Western gambler, who, under 
unexpected conditions, develops unexpected qualities, — 
the qualities of practical sympathy and heroic self-sacrifice. 
He had been included among those who were destined to 
leave Poker Flat, for the community had recently lost sev- 
eral thousand dollars, two valuable horses, and a prominent 
citizen. Two of those destined for exile were already hang- 
ing to the boughs of a sycamore in the gulch ; a secret com- 
mittee had even considered the hanging of Mr. Oakhurst, 
one of the minority contending that " it's agin justice to let 
this yer young man from Roaring Camp — an entire stran- 
ger — carry away our money." The minority of the com- 
mittee, however, was overruled, and Mr. Oakhurst was 
included in the "deported wickedness" that was escorted 
to the outskirts of Poker Flat by a body of armed men. In 
this expatriated company were a young woman famiHarly 
known as the " Duchess," another called " Mother Shipton," 
and a third person, " Uncle Billy," a suspected sluice-robber 



** The Luck of Roaring Camp** 249 

and confirmed drunkard. At the outermost edge of Poker 
Flat this company was set adrift, with the impHcit injunction 
not to return, at the peril of their lives. 

The " outcasts " decided on Sandy Bar for their destina- 
tion, a camp that lay over a steep mountain range, a hard 
day's travel distant. At noon the Duchess refused to go 
farther, and the party halted, although scarcely half the 
journey to Sandy Bar was accomplished and provisions for 
delay were lacking. Mr. Oakhurst, the gambler, called it 
" throwing up their hand before the game was played out." 
But they were provided with whisky, if not with any ade- 
quate supply of provisions, and they were all soon in a help- 
less state of stupor — all except the gambler, who never 
drank, — it interfered, he said, with his profession and he 
" couldn't afford it." His thought seemed never to be that 
of deserting his feebler and more pitiable companions, as they 
lay in a drunken stupor amid the encircling pines, — pre- 
cipitous cliffs of naked granite rising above them on three 
sides, and the crest of a precipice in front overlooking the 
valley. They were suddenly reenforced by an eloping couple 
going to Poker Flat to be married, and as the prospective 
bridegroom had once lost money to Mr. Oakhurst and had it 
considerately returned, he greeted the gambler as a genuine 
friend and was insistent on camping with his party, assuring 
Mr. Oakhurst that he had an extra mule loaded with provi- 
sions, and that there was a rude attempt at a log house near 
the trail. That night the women spent in the log house and 
the men lay before the door. Waking benumbed with cold, 
the gambler stirred the dying fire and felt on his cheek the 
touch of snow ! Turning to where the thieving Uncle Billy 
slept he found him gone, and the tethered mules with him. 
At dawn the gambler recognized that they were "snowed 



250 Provincial Types in the Far West 

in," with all that implied in the loss of the trail and the cut- 
ting off of provisions and rescue. 

In his unsuspected kindliness of heart Mr. Oakhurst, the 
gambler, was unwilling that Tom Simson and Piney, the 
eloping couple, should know the real rascality of Uncle Billy, 
and implied that the latter had wandered off from the camp 
and stampeded the animals by accident. And through the 
gambler's request the Duchess and Mother Shipton also 
gave out the same impression as to Uncle Billy's where- 
abouts. But Tom seemed rather to look forward to a 
week's camping with his sweetheart, and his gayety and Mr. 
Oakhurst's professional calm " infected " the others. From 
some unaccountable motive Mr. Oakhurst cached the whisky, 
and concealed his cards. And Tom somewhat osten- 
tatiously produced an accordion from his pack, from which 
his sweetheart, Piney, succeeded in plucking a few reluctant 
tunes to the accompaniment of Tom's bone castanets. The 
lovers sang, too, a rude camp-meeting hymn, joining hands 
as they did so, and the defiant covenanters' swing of the 
chorus finally led the others to join in the somewhat pro- 
phetic refrain : — 

"Pm proud to live in the service of the Lord, 
And Pm bound to die in His army." 

And above these doomed singers the pines rocked and the 
storm eddied. 

In dividing the watch that night with Tom Simson, Mr. 
Oakhurst somehow managed to take upon himself the 
greater share of the duty, explaining that he had " often 
been a week without sleep " when luck at poker ran high. 
"When a man gets a streak of luck, — nigger-luck, — he 
don't get tired. The luck gives in first. Luck," continued 



"The Luck of Roaring Camp" 251 

the gambler meditatively, " is a mighty queer thing. All you 
know is that it's bound to change. And it's finding out when 
it's going to change that makes you." 

The nights were filled with the reedy notes of the accor- 
dion, but music failed to fill the aching void of insufficient 
food, and story-telling was suggested by Piney. However, 
Mr. Oakhurst and his female companions were hardly will- 
ing to relate their personal experiences in the presence of 
the Innocent, as they called Tom, or of " the child," as the 
Duchess and Mother Shipton called Piney ; and this plan 
of diversion would have fallen through had the Innocent not 
been able to recall some of Mr. Pope's translation of the 
"Iliad," which he had chanced upon a few months before. 
He told the exciting incidents of the epic in the current 
vernacular of Sandy Bar. And he got an enthusiastic hear- 
ing, while the great pines in the canon seemed to bow to 
the wrath of the son of Peleus. Mr. Oakhurst was espe- 
cially interested in the fate of " Ash-heels," as the Innocent 
insisted on calling the " swift-footed Achilles." 

A week passed over the heads of the outcasts, the sun 
again abandoned them, and the leaden skies sifted swiftly 
down upon them great banks of snow, till they stood more 
than twenty feet above the cabin. It became increasingly 
difficult to replenish the fires, and yet no one complained. 
The lovers looked into each other's eyes and were happy, 
but Mother Shipton seemed to sicken and fade. At mid- 
night of the tenth day she called the gambler to her side, 
and said, in a querulous weakness of voice : " I'm going, but 
don't say anything about it. Don't waken the kids. Take 
the bundle from under my head and open it." It contained 
the rations she had saved for a week. " Give 'em to the 
child," she said, pointing to Piney. Starvation through 



25^ Provincial Types in the Far West 

self-sacrifice was the unexpected ending of this abandoned 
woman's Ufe. 

With another unselfish motive coming to the surface, 
Mr. Oakhurst took the Innocent aside and showed him a 
pair of snow-shoes he had fashioned from the old pack- 
saddles. The gambler announced that if by the aid of 
these Tom could reach Poker Flat in two days, his sweet- 
heart could be saved. Oakhurst pretended to accompany 
Tom as far as the canon, unexpectedly kissing the Duchess 
good-by before he went. It stirred her with emotion and 
amazement ; but the gambler never came back. The 
Duchess, feeding the fire during the fierce storm of wind 
and snow on the following night, found that some one had 
quietly piled beside the hut enough fuel to last a few days 
longer ; and it was not difficult to surmise that it was due 
to the thoughtfulness of Oakhurst. The second night the 
two women were frozen to death in each other's arms — 
the soiled Duchess and the virgin Piney. " And when pity- 
ing fingers brushed the snow away from their wan faces, 
you could scarcely have told, from the equal peace that 
dwelt upon them, which was she that had sinned." 

At the head of the gulch the searchers found on one of 
the largest pine trees the deuce of clubs pinned to the bark 
with a bowie knife ; and on it was written in pencil, with a 
firm hand, " Beneath this tree lies the body of John Oak- 
hurst, who struck a streak of bad luck on the 23d Novem- 
ber, 1850, and handed in his checks on the 7th of December, 
1850." And underneath the snow, with a bullet through 
his heart and a derringer by his side, lay the calm-faced 
gambler, whose hard life was softened and ennobled at its 
close by thoughtful sympathy and sublime self-sacrifice. 

One of the more unusual and successful of Mr. Harte's 



" The Luck of Roaring Camp " 253 

sliort stories in this volume is the very human and dra- 
matic narrative of " How Santa Claus Came to Simp- 
son's Bar." By reason of the heavy rains the North Fork 
of the Sacramento had overrun its banks and Rattlesnake 
Creek had become impassable. The bowlders that marked 
the ford at Simpson's Crossing were lost in the vast sheet 
of water reaching to the foot-hills ; and even the stage and 
tlie mail had to be abandoned. The mud lay so deep on the 
mountain road that neither force nor profanity could lift the 
wagons from the miry ruts, and the way to Simpson's Bar 
was marked by broken-dov/n teams and stranded vehicles. 
The weather, too, on that Christmas eve in 1862, could 
hardly have been worse ; and Simpson's Bar, as it " clung 
like a swallow's nest to the rocky entablature and splintered 
capitals of Table Mountain," was smitten with high winds 
as well as threatened with high water. 

That particular Christmas eve most of the population of 
Simpson's Bar were snugly gathered at Thompson's grocery, 
wliere a red-hot stove seemed to be the center of social 
interest, in lieu of more exciting diversions. For on account 
of the high water and consequent suspension of regular em- 
ployment on gulch and river, there was naturally lack of 
money and whisky, which usually added so much zest to the 
somewhat questionable recreations of the inhabitants of the 
B:ir. Even the professional gambler, Mr. Hamlin, was glad 
to get away with fifty dollars in his pocket, — all he could 
realize from the large sums he had actually won in the prac- 
tice of his profession. His impression of Simpson's Bar was 
in the main complimentary, but not entirely favorable to it 
as a permanent place for a needy and ambitious gambler. 
" Ef I was asked," he once remarked, " ef I was asked to 
pint out a purty little village where a retired sport as didn't 



2 54 Provincial Types in the Far West 

care for money could exercise hisself, frequent and lively, 
I'd say Simpson's Bar ; but for a young man with a large 
family depending on his exertions, it don't pay." 

The group around the glowing stove in Thompson's store 
were sitting in a dull apathy, which not even the sudden 
splashing of hoofs outside was effective enough to arouse. 
Dick Bullen, the oracle and leader at Simpson's Bar, only 
paused in the act of scraping out his pipe, and hfted his 
head ; but no one else in the silent circle made any sign of 
interest, or even an effort at recognition, when a man entered. 
It was the familiar figure of the " Old Man," who was ap- 
parently some fifty years of age, with scant and grizzled 
hair, a youthful complexion, and a face of ready sympathy 
that changed, chameleon-Uke, with " the shade and color of 
contiguous moods and feelings." Coming, evidently, from 
association with hilarious companions, he mistook the tem- 
per of the present company, and clapping the nearest man 
on the shoulder began to make what he considered an appe- 
tizing allusion to " the richest yarn " he had just heard from 
Jim Smiley, — "the funniest man in the Bar." When, how- 
ever, the solemn judgment of the company was expressed to 
the effect that Smiley was a fool and a skunk, the Old Man's 
face discreetly changed to one of pessimistic assent, and he 
appropriately remarked on the dismalness of the weather. 
" Mighty rough papers on the boys, and no show for money 
this season. And to-morrow's Christmas." . . . "Yes," 
continued the Old Man in the lugubrious tone he had 
unconsciously adopted, "Yes, Christmas, and to-night's 
Christmas Eve. Ye see, boys, I kinder thought — that is, I 
sorter had an idee, jest passin' like, you know — that maybe 
ye'd like to come over to my house to-night and have a 
sort of tear round." 



"The Luck of Roaring Camp" 2^^ 

The only reply to his anxious invitation came from Tom 
Flynn, who wanted to know what the Old Man's wife thought 
about it. There was hesitation on the part of the Old Man, 
for this was his second wife, who had formerly been his cook, 
and she was large and aggressive. " Before he could reply, 
Joe Dimmick suggested, with great directness, that it was 
the ' Old Man's house,' and that, invoking the Divine Power, 
if the case were his own he would invite whom he pleased, 
even if in so doing he imperiled his salvation." Spurred 
to unaccustomed boldness by the subtle audacity of this sug- 
gestion, the Old Man sympathetically frowned, and repHed : 
"Thar's no trouble about t/iet. It's my own house, built 
every stick on it myself Don't you be afeard o' her, boys. 
She may cut up a trifle rough — ez wimmin do — but she'll 
come round." He was secretly relying on " the exaltation of 
liquor and the power of courageous example to sustain him 
in such an emergency." 

And now spoke Dick Bullen, the oracle. Taking his pipe 
from his mouth, he inquired sympathetically : " Old Man, how's 
that yer Johnny gettin' on? Seems to me he didn't look so 
peart last time I seed him on the bluff heavin' rocks at 
Chinamen. Didn't seem to take much interest in it. Thar 
was a gang of 'em by yar yesterday, — drownded out up the 
river, — and I kinder thought o' Johnny, and how he'd miss 
'em ! Maybe now, we'd be in the way ef he wus sick ? " 
The father hastened to assure the oracle that Johnny was 
better and that " a little fun might 'liven him up." Where- 
upon Dick Bullen, catching up a blazing brand from the 
hearth, made a leap into the night, with a characteristic howl, 
and his companions followed his example, leaving the aston- 
ished proprietor of Thompson's grocery alone in his deserted 
rooms. The gusty night wind put out the torches, but the 



256 Provincial Types in the Far West 

red brands went dancing and flitting up Pine Creek Canon, 
" like drunken will-o'-the-wisps," till they reached a low, 
bark-thatched cabin burrowed in the side of the mountain. 
It stood at the entrance to the tunnel in which the Old Man 
worked when he worked at all. 

Pausing out of deference to their host, who was the last to 
arrive, they waited under the eaves of the cabin while the 
Old Man went in to see that " things is all right." For a few 
moments there was no sound but the dripping of water from 
the eaves and the " rustle of wrestling boughs " above them. 
Then the men began to show anxiety, and their whispered 
suspicions passed back and forth : " Reckoned she's caved 
in his head the first lick ! " " Decoyed him inter the tunnel 
and barred him up, hkely." " Got him down and sittin' on 
him." " Prob'bly biling suthin' to heave on us ; stand clear 
the door, boys ! " Suddenly the latch clicked, the door 
slowly opened, and the weak treble of a small boy's voice 
said hospitably, " Come in out o' the wet." It was a boy's 
face that looked up at them, a face that might have been 
pretty, and even refined, " but that it was darkened by evil 
knowledge from within, and dirt and hard experience from 
without." He had a blanket about his shoulders and had evi- 
dently just risen from his bed. " Come in, and don't make 
no noise. The Old Man's in there talking to mar." As 
Dick Bullen caught the small boy up, blanket and all, and 
pretended to toss him into the fire, the Httle fellow queru- 
lously swore at him, crying out, " Let me be ; . . . let go 
o' me ... d' ye hear? " 

Ranging themselves quietly round a long table of rough 
boards, the men watched Johnny as he gravely brought 
from a cupboard several articles which he laid upon the 
table. " Thar's whisky. And crackers. And red herons. 



'* The Luck of Roaring Camp" 257 

And cheese." He took a bite of the latter, and also scooped 
up with his small and very dirty hand a mouthful of the 
sugar he was carrying. Finally he added, in the lavishness 
of his hospitality : " And terbacker. Thar's dried appils, 
too, on the shelf, but I don't admire 'em. Appils is swellin'. 
Thar," he concluded, " now wade in, and don't be afeard. 
/ don't mind the old woman. She don't b'long to me. 
S'long." With that Johnny stepped to the threshold of his 
little room just off from the main apartment, and stood there 
a moment, looking at the company and disclosing his bare 
feet through the folds of the blanket. When asked by Dick 
Bullen why he was going to '' turn in," Johnny repHed that 
he was sick. " I've got a fevier. And childblains. And 
roomatiz.". With the last word Johnny suddenly vanished; 
and then, after a moment's pause, there came from the 
darkness within, and apparently from under the bedclothes, 
'* And biles ! " 

There followed an embarrassing silence, which threatened 
to be as prolonged and as deep as that which surrounded 
the group at Thompson's grocery, when deprecatingly sounded 
from the kitchen the voice of the Old Man, lying to his irate 
second wife : " Certainly ! Thet's so. In course they is. 
A gang o' lazy, drunken loafers, and that ar Dick Bullen's 
the ornariest of all. Didn't hev no more sabe than to come 
round yar, with sickness in the house and no provision. 
Thet's what I said : ' Bullen,' sez I, ' it's crazy drunk you 
are, or a fool,' sez I, 'to think o' such a thing.' 'Staples,' 
T sez, ' be you a man, Staples, and 'spect to raise h — 11 un- 
der my roof, and invalids lyin' round?' But they would 
come, — they would. Thet's wot you must 'spect o' such 
trash as lays round the Bar." Whereupon a burst of laugh- 
ter rose from the listening men ; and whether it was overheard 



258 Provincial Types in the Far West 

in the kitchen or whether the wrathful wife, having exhausted 
all her other modes of contempt, was giving her last exhibition 
of temper, the back door was suddenly slammed with great 
violence. In a moment the Old Man himself reappeared, 
happily unaware of the cause of the recent hilarious out- 
break, and smiling blandly, remarked, "The old woman 
thought she'd jest run over to Mrs. McFadden's for a 
sociable call." 

Till nearly midnight the festivities of Christmas eve were 
continued, when from Johnny's little room came the queru- 
lous cry, " Oh, dad." Dick Bullen, holding up his hand, 
said, " Hush," and the Old Man hurriedly disappeared in the 
bedroom. " His rheumatiz is coming on bad," said the 
father, on his reappearance, "and he wants rubbin'." But, 
alas ! the demijohn on the table was empty. The men set 
down their tin cups, in their generous anxiety, and the Old 
Man hopefully remarked that he reckoned the whisky in 
them would be enough. He enjoined them to wait till he 
got back, and disappeared with the whisky and an old 
flannel shirt. 

Through the partly closed door was distinctly audible this 
peculiar dialogue: " Hevin' a good time out yar, dad?" 
"Yes, sonny." " To-morrer's Chrismiss, — ain't it? " " Yes, 
sonny. How does she feel now?" "Better. Rub a Httle 
furder down. Wot's Chrismiss, any way? Wot's it all 
about ?" "Oh, it's a day." There was a silent interval of 
rubbing, and then Johnny's voice was again heard : " Mar 
sez that everywhere else but yer everybody gives things to 
everybody Chrismiss, and then she jest waded inter you. 
She sez thar's a man they call Sandy Claws, not a white man, 
you know, but a kind o' Chinemin — comes down the 
chimbley night afore Chrismiss and gives things to chillern, 



"The Luck of Roaring Camp" 259 

— boys like me. Puts 'em in their butes ! Thet's what she 
tried to play upon me. Easy, now, pop, whar are you rub- 
bin' to, — thet's a mile from the place. She jest made that 
up, didn't she, jest to aggrevate me and you? Don't rub 
thar. . . . Why, dad ! " 

In the great quiet that followed could be heard the sigh- 
ing of the neighboring pines and the dripping of the leaves. 
Johnny's voice grew lower as he went on : " Don't you take 
on now, for I'm gettin' all right fast. Wot's the boys doin' 
out thar?" Through the partly opened door the Old Man 
could see his guests sitting there sociably enough, with a few 
coins and a lean buckskin purse lying on the table. " Bettin' 
on suthin', some httle game or 'nother. They're all right," 
he replied to Johnny, and renewed his rubbing. Johnny 
expressed a wish that he could take a hand and win some 
money, and the Old Man glibly repeated his old formula of 
consolation that when he struck it rich in the tunnel Johnny 
would have lots of money. "Yes," said Johnny, "but you 
don't. And whether you strike it or win it, it's about the 
same. It's all luck. But it's mighty cur'o's about Chrismiss, 

— ain't it? Why do they call it Chrismiss ? " But whether 
from deference to the ears of his guests, or from "some 
vague sense of incongruity," the Old Man's reply was so low 
as not to reach the outer room. " Yes," said Johnny, with 
slighter interest in his voice, "I've heerd o' him before. 
Thar, that'll do, dad. I don't ache near so bad as I did." 
Asking his father to wrap the blanket tightly about him, and 
to sit down by him till he went to sleep, Johnny disengaged 
one hand from the blanket, and, taking hold of his father's 
sleeve to assure himself that he was there, he finally fell 
asleep. 

The unusual stillness in the house prompted the Old Man 



26o Provincial Types in the Far West 

to open the door with his disengaged hand, and look into 
the main room. What was his surprise to find it dark and 
apparently deserted. But at that moment a sudden flame 
from the smoldering log leaped up and hghted the face of 
Dick BuUen, sitting alone before the dying embers. Dick 
explained that the rest had gone up the canon and that he 
was waiting for them. The Old Man stared at Dick as if he 
were drunk, and, in fact, his face was flushed and his eyes 
moist — but not from Hquor. Dick defended himself from 
the implied charge by remarking : " Liquor ain't so plenty 
as that. Old Man. Now don't you git up," he continued, 
as the father made a movement to release his sleeve from 
Johnny's hand. " Don't you mind manners. Sit jest whar 
you be ; I'm goin' in a jiffy. Thar, that's them now." And 
saying good-night to his host, he disappeared in the night. 
The Old Man, drawing his chair closer to the bed, rested 
his head upon it, and under the influence of his earlier 
potations soon fell asleep. 

Meanwhile, outside, Dick Bullen was preparing for a fifty- 
mile ride, through the night and the surging waters, in search 
of toys for Johnny's Christmas morning ; but before he 
started he reentered the cabin, tiptoed into the little room 
where the sick Johnny and his father lay asleep, and bent 
down over the little boy as if to kiss his forehead. Sud- 
denly, however, an inconsiderate blast swept down the chim- 
ney arid rekindled the hearth, and Dick fled in foolish terror. 

Once more with his companions at the crossing, he stood 
ready to mount the mare Jovita for his perilous night ride. 
Two of them were struggling with her in the darkness. " She 
was not a pretty picture. From her Roman nose to her 
rising haunches, from her arched spine, hidden by the stiff 
machillas of a Mexican saddle, to her thick, straight, bony 



"The Luck of Roaring Camp" 261 

legs, there was not a line of equine grace. In her half-blind 
but wholly vicious white eyes, in her protruding under lip, 
in her monstrous color, there was nothing but ugliness and 
vice." " Now, then," said Staples, " stand cl'ar of her heels, 
boy, and up with you." A leap, a struggle, a play and jingle 
of spurs, a plunge, — and then the voice of Dick Bullen 
sounded out from the darkness, "All right ! " 

At one o'clock he had only gained Rattlesnake Hill, owing 
to Jovita's rearing and plunging and mad shooting off on a 
tangent with the bit in her teeth. Down the long hill that 
led to Rattlesnake Creek Dick pretended to hold her in by 
swearing at her and by well feigned cries of alarm; where- 
upon Jovita ran away, as Dick intended she should, and 
made the long descent to the creek in a record-breaking 
time that became a tradition of Simpson's Bar. At Rattle- 
snake Creek, under her acquired momentum, they made a 
mighty leap into the rushing current, and after much kick- 
ing and wading and swimming she brought Dick safely 
through to the opposite bank. At two o'clock he had 
passed Red Mountain, and a few minutes later the driver 
of the fast Pioneer coach was overtaken. At half-past two 
Dick rose in his stirrups and gave a great shout, for there 
beneath the stars that glittered through the cloud rifts 
towered two spires and a flagstaff, and in a few minutes 
Jovita and her rider drew up before "The Hotel of All 
Nations " in Tuttleville. 

Giving Jovita over to the care of a sleepy hostler, " whom 
she at once kicked into unpleasant consciousness," Dick 
Bullen made a sally with the barkeeper through the sleeping 
town. Avoiding the few saloons and gambling houses that 
were still open, they knocked at several closed shops, whose 
proprietors sometimes cursed but oftener showed interest in 



262 Provincial Types in the Far West 

Dick's unusual errand of buying some Christmas toys for a 
sick little boy in Simpson's Bar. At three o'clock Dick had 
his toys for Johnny snugly safe in a small waterproof bag 
strapped on his shoulders, and springing to his saddle he 
dashed down the deserted street and out into the lonelier 
plain, from which the lights of the town, the spires, and the 
flagstaff sank gradually into the earth behind him. 

Toward dawn, as Dick was singing and allowing the reins 
to rest lightly on Jovita's neck, she suddenly shied. A high- 
wayman grasped her bridle, and another commanded Dick 
to throw up his hands. Jovita rose straight in the air, 
threw off the figure with a vicious shake of her head, and 
"charged with deadly malevolence on the impediment 
before her." There was an oath, a pistol shot, and then 
Jovita was a hundred yards away, with the arm of her rider, 
shattered by a bullet, hanging helplessly at his side. His 
only fear now was that he would be too late. The morning 
stars had begun to pale, and the distant peaks stood out 
blackly against a lighter sky. He felt a roaring in his ears, 
due perhaps to exhaustion from loss of blood ; but he at 
last had reached Rattlesnake Creek, which now had doubled 
its volume and rolled a resistless river. For the first time 
the heart of Richard Bullen sank within him ; but casting 
off his coat, his pistol, his boots and saddle, and binding 
his precious bag of toys tightly to his shoulders, he gripped 
the bare flanks of Jovita with his naked knees, and with a 
shout dashed into the rushing water. A cry arose from the 
opposite bank at sight of the struggling man and horse, and 
then horse and rider were swept down the mad current 
in the midst of uprooted trees and whirling driftwood. 

A little later, at the log cabin in Simpson's Bar, the Old 
Man woke at dawn to hear a sudden rapping on the door ; 



"The Luck of Roaring Camp" 262 

and as he opened it he fell back with a cry before the drip- 
ping, half-naked figure that staggered against the doorpost. 
It was Dick Bullen, and his first question was, " Is he awake 
yet?" Assured that the sick little Johnny was still asleep, 
he asked for some whisky. But alas ! for the exhausted 
rider, when the Old Man returned it was only with an empty 
bottle. Dick caught at the handle of the door and said 
eagerly : '^ Thar's suthin' .in my pack yer for Johnny. Take 
it off. I can't." And when the Old Man unstrapped the 
pack and laid it before Dick, there were only a few cheap 
toys covered with tinsel and paint — one broken, one ruined 
by the water, and one stained with a cruel spot of blood. 
" It don't look Hke much, that's a fact," said Dick regret- 
fully. ... " But it's the best we could do. . . . Take 
'em. Old Man, and put 'em in his stocking, and tell him — 
tell him, you know," — the Old Man hastened to support 
Dick's sinking figure, — ''tell him," said Dick with a foolish 
little laugh, " tell him Sandy Glaus has come." And Richard 
Bullen, who came in so unexpected a guise as Santa Glaus, 
fell fainting on the threshold, as the Ghristmas dawn came 
slowly up, " touching the remoter peaks with the rosy warmth 
of ineffable love. And it looked so tenderly on Simpson's 
Bar that the whole mountain, as if caught in a generous 
action, blushed to the skies." 

Of such generous impulses, easy daring, and unconsidered 
self-sacrifice as Dick BuUen's were some of these pioneer 
types compounded, even if with these qualities went others 
that were sadly incongruous. And the same strange mix- 
ture of traits is seen in the dirty and profane htde Johnny, 
who was yet as hospitable in heart and as tender in his 
affection as the Old Man who sat patiently by his bed that 
Ghristmas night and showed the real love of a father. 



264 Provincial Types in the Far West 

Whether one becomes absorbed in the story of " Mhss," 
the willful but devoted little schoolgirl of Smith's Pocket ; 
or in the pathetic sketch of " Miggles " and her helpless 
'' baby " Jim, who had once been her extravagant admirer, 
but had been smitten into imbecility by a "stroke"; or in 
the unavaiHng generosity of "Tennessee's Partner"; or in 
that dramatic ride of Dick BuUen and Jovita, across the 
torrent of Rattlesnake Creek, that " Sandy " Claus might 
come in time to Simpson's Bar, — it would be difficult to 
say in which of these stories may be found the deftest 
touches in the characterization of those strange pioneer 
types that live again through the picturesque genius of 
Bret Harte. 



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